Owl Update

As I was walking home from church tonight, I heard some odd animal sounds coming from the trees in the field next to my house. I also thought I saw a bird swooping in and out of the trees. With all of the bird activity at our house this week, I grabbed a flashlight and went to check it out.

As I scanned the trees with my flashlight, I found 3 baby owls and the swooping bird I saw was the mother bird bringing them food. The sound I heard was the baby owls crying out for momma to bring them food!

I didn't think my camera would pick up the owls in the dark, but as you can see from these pictures, it did (click on the pictures to see a larger version). These are the three baby owls...Momma Owl wouldn't stay long enough for me to get her picture.

Baby Owl Finds His Way Home

Last night a baby owl showed up in our back yard. It was obvious he had "flown the coop" a bit early and could not fly. Both parents watched as he hopped around, and by the time we went to bed, I did not have much confidence he would make it through the night (we have cats, foxes and other predators around here).
At 9am today, I looked out the window and was surprised to see the baby owl in our back yard. He was flapping around and seemed scared. Both parents were in the trees still watching him. I tried looking up some sort of bird or owl rescue to ask what to do to help the little guy because it seemed obvious he was going to get eaten...but I couldn't find anything online.
We went back out to check on him and he managed to start climbing a tree. He grabbed the tree with his claws, flapped his wings and literally walked up the tree. I ran back in to get the video camera again and as I was videoing the owl in the tree, I saw something else move. I zoomed in and saw another baby owl peeking out a hole in the tree. Our little guy found his way home!
I took the video camera to school today to show my students and we used it as an opportunity to learn a little about video editing. The second grade class named the owl Chubbykins, and so we put his name in the video. My wonderful junior high class, while making their own owl video, started playing around with my video camera and taped over the original video (which made me OH SO HAPPY when I found out tonight). Anyway, the only video footage this is left is what we did in the second grade class today, so the name Chubbykins is forever tied with the owl video. (Yes, I realize I could edit the video, but this copy is already degraded from the original and if I edit and re-render, the quality will be very poor).
So here is Chubbykin's story on video.

More Animals

I had to go by the church to get something this evening, so I headed out the back door. As I approached the gate, I saw the owl sitting on the fence (we've seen it around before). I could not believe how close it let me get to it on the way out.

When I came back from the church, I looked on the fence and noticed the owl was gone. I looked up and saw it on the power line above me. As I approached the gate, I saw another owl on the ground. That's when I figured out that the one on the ground was a baby owl and perhaps that is why it let me get so close earlier.

Because Amanda is an animal lover, I went inside and told her to put on her shoes. I told her about the owl and said, "Let's see how close it will let us get". The owl was just on the other side of the chain link fence...like maybe a foot from the fence. We walked within a couple feet of the fence and it just looked at us.

With an opportunity like this, we ran back in the house and grabbed the camera. This time, we walked right up to the fence and the owl still did not move. I put the camera near the ground between the links of the fence and got this picture. I cropped it to make the owl easier to see, but as you can tell from the detail in the picture (click on it to make it larger), I was able to get within two feet of the little guy.

Amanda and I watched for another 20 minutes while both parents watched the baby, swooped down to where he was and "called" to him. The baby could hop and flap his wings, but it did not appear he could fly. We wanted to "help" but did not know to put the baby owl, plus, we figured the parents had a bit more experience than we did. So we said good night, left the parents to do their "owl thing" and said a short prayer for the little guy at bed time.