Eric Johnson sent me these photos last week of an owl perched on his patio porch light.
What kind of owl is it? (Hint: it doesn’t hoot.)
Eric Johnson sent me these photos last week of an owl perched on his patio porch light.
What kind of owl is it? (Hint: it doesn’t hoot.)
looks a bit big for Eastern Screech owl (average 8 and 1/2 “) and too small for a Great Horned owl (average 22”)… but the behavior… perched on prominent place at dusk to hunt… is typical for a GHO. (This from Sibley Guide to Birds)
Beautiful; how lucky to have seen it!
Looks like a Screech.
Yup, I’d say an Eastern Screech, partly from the size and partly from the fact that the breast is vertically barred — Great Horned Owls have strong horizontal bars.
Cool!
By the way, GHO’s are common right in town, though seldom seen, at least by me. I heard a couple of them hooting in the classical way one night a week or two ago on the east side of Manitou St.
The last (only) time I saw screech owls up close was circa 1978, inside the office of Dr. Charles Kemper of Chippewa Falls WI.
Apart from treating humans, he also cared for injured birds – including a pair of blind screech owls which he kept because they would not be able to survive in the wild.
Thanks to the miracle of Google, I found this reference to those screech owls:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19830430&id=19YVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SxIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6492,6738956
I’m also glad to see that Dr. Kemper’s land is being turned into a nature preserve:
http://www.chippewa.com/articles/2007/04/21/news/945q.txt