My friend Ryan somehow took this picture of an owl. I’ve no idea what kind – I cannot identify many owls. But I love its expression and body language. It fits so many moods. Enjoy!
This owl
Baby Northern Spotted Owl!!!
My Google Alert for owl has finally given me some links!! The British Columbia Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program has a breeding pair of Northern Spotted Owls that had a baby!! You can even watch their live nest cam! But here’s a photo of the tiny baby owl!!!
Morning owl: Ferruginous Pygmy owl
This morning’s owl is TINY! According to the book, the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl is smaller than a starling, though it gives measurements of up to 7 inches long and wingspan up to 16 inches. Still for an owl that does seem tiny and adorable. It’s pretty widespread and not very endangered.
Morning owl: Indian Scops Owl
The book has some very “leave me alone” pictures of this owl which figures in my picking it. But I learned a new thing: scops owls can lower and raise their ear tufts — and not all owls can!
The male call is apparently a questioning frog-like “what?” which this recording sort of sounds like.
Emotionowl state
I have a cold persisting and gives me evening headaches. I feel a bit like this owl looks.
Morning owl: Barred Owl
This morning I opened up the owl book to the Barred Owl. Here I learned it’s a really common nocturnal owl pushing into even northwestern forests and edging out its cousin the Spotted Owl, an owl everyone on the west coast knows about as it’s a symbol of the conflicts between a traditional resource extraction industry (logging) and conservation. It’s also pushing out the Western Screetch Owl so the Forest Service has controversially done culls of them!
We were delighted to listen to clips of Barred Owls hooting after reading that they make a call that the book wrote down as: “hoo, hoo, too-HOO; hoo, hoo, too-HOO, ooo”. Autocorrect on my phone is now hopelessly confused as I refused all its suggestions for “hoo”.
This morning one of the pictures from the book expresses my feelings well:
Morning owl: Snowy Owl
My friend Cate got me The Enigma of the Owl which half caused this blog. My daughter (three and a half) says it’s full of happy owls. One of the first owls in the book is the snowy owl.
I’m not going to link to any resources because the snowy owl is pretty charismatic and is all over the place (I think there was even a foolish fad of getting them as pets due to the Harry Potter books and movies.) I do think it pretty cool that state governments maintain little taxonomy pages though.
Anyway, here’s a picture!
Emotionowl state: 😳
(Image source: Wikimedia Commons user Anton Bielousov)
Fancy Owls!
Because I need more projects, here is a new blog. But taking a page from my friend Cate, I intend this to be pretty simple and just be photos of owls or owl related silliness without much in the way of text.
Cate and I bonded a bit over owls. I told her about my grandmother’s collection of (frankly kind of kitschy) owl statues and what my grandmother meant to me. Cate encouraged owl interest by finding me cute owl statues to add to those from my grandmother (she’s deceased.) So to start us off, a couple owl statues.
Here’s one from my grandmother’s collection:
And here’s one from Cate:
Fancy Owls 