Great horned Owl

This one was sitting in the top of a big live oak, he/she let us get pretty close. Such a spectacular bird! You can hear them calling to one another right around sunset all up and down our arroyo.

Another great picture! Boy it was sure looking at you hard.

How many might fit on a skewer?

That rattler would like to nail that guy----------

beautiful pic, and bird.

----no skewers tonight (yuck)

Barry

Saw this guy in a tree by the house one morning, the biggest GHO I've ever seen. We keep Cacawhate close by when he's around as I'm sure he could carry her off.........dt

Owls are great creatures.

We have had owls at our northern home forever. Tufted and round-heads. Great Horned & Great Grey Owls, Snowy Owls, Barn Owls, Hawk Owls, Screech Owls, Burrowing Owls, Damn Loud Owls....and some Show Business Owls, like this guy at our local renaissance fair.


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Eagles get into the act, too.
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Owls, like mentioned in this thread before make great pets and can be trained much as a falcon or hawk. Where I grew up, the nearest ranch was the home of my boyhood friend, who had a pet owl and two pet crows. The owl was named..what else..Hooter.

The two crows were Heckel and Jeckel (famous cinema cartoon crows of our era). Whereever my buddy and I would go, those 2 crows would follow.

Later, when school started the crows would try to ride into our country schoolhouse on his shoulders, but the teacher always shoo-ed them outside, where they made quite a racket before flying home. My chum also had a pet skunk named Stinky.....who destroyed about half our combined wardrobes in a very short time.
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The Case of the Missing Chicken Carcass

I had baked a chicken in a Corning Ware baking dish, removed the meat and for some reason set the dish outside on the patio table. The carcass was encrustedly stuck to the dish. Then I left on an errand for about 20 minutes. It was already dark. I came back to find the dish busted into a gazillion pieces about 15 feet away from the table. The chicken carcass was gone.

Hmm…what happened??
The dish was too far away from the table to be knocked off by a dog, and the concrete was chipped where the dish crashed down. The only thing that made sense was one of the many neighborhood owls must have swooped down and latched onto that carcass and flew off with it, and the dish dropped off.

I miss that dish…

jeans, Owls aren't scavengers, but you never know. They might have been drooling over that chicken for an hour or two. Your guess is as good as mine, but I'd bet a two-legged thief dropped the plate and ate the bird.

Quote:

Originally posted by Cypress jeans, Owls aren't scavengers, but you never know. They might have been drooling over that chicken for an hour or two. Your guess is as good as mine, but I'd bet a two-legged thief dropped the plate and ate the bird.

jeans, Living in the boonies. Yea we've lost 5 goats in the past couple of weeks. Looks like a wolf or wolves did the damage from the looks of the tracks. Ate full grown goats , left a little hide bones etc.

another bald eagle story...

This happened a few years ago to a buddy of mine just a little ways southeast of us in Minnesota.

It could have been a disaster.

As it was, it was a frightening experience when the small helicopter he was flying collided with a bald eagle 2,000 feet above the Shakopee-Eden Prairie in early July. This is a very popular summerfair area. The eagle crashed through the helicopter’s windshield and slammed into the chest of a passenger.

The baldie took out half of the windshield. Dusty, the pilot, landed the helicopter safely (he flew Cobras in another life) and the passenger wasn’t seriously hurt. The eagle was killed.

If it had hit the prop or the pilot or the rotor, it could have brought that helicopter down.

Dusty had rented the copter and was giving his girlfriend a ride when the accident occurred. He later weighed the eagle at just under 10 pounds.

The girlfriend decided to date someone else.
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Here's a far north owl waiting for breakfast.