Back At Home

After a ridiculous weekend drive to Canada, this weekend is an opportunity to stay home and participate in Audubon's Great Backyard Bird Count. If you can participate, go to http://gbbc.birdcount.org/ and enter your sightings for any day between Friday and Monday. I've had some pretty cool birds to enter.

Of course, our little Screech Owl is being counted. Here he/she is the other day in bright daylight.

"Our" Screech Owl

He/she has been sitting up in the opening of the box almost every day for months now so safe to say that this is "home".

Another raptor is making the count this year. A young Cooper's hawk has been wreaking havoc on the yard birds for the past few days. On Thursday, it crashed into the honeysuckle vine just outside of my office window chasing some sparrows. He came up short and sat on the bird feeder pole sulking.

Cooper's Hawk

I call this one a "he" due to the small size of the bird. At first, I thought it might be a Sharp-shinned Hawk which are a smaller version of accipiter.

In both cases, I root for the raptor even though I know that they eat the other birds. Anyway, I might end up counting fewer sparrows at the end of the weekend than at the beginning - if you know what I mean.

Speaking of owls . . . Connie and I took Peanut to Pennypack park this morning and found a Great Horned Owl perched in a tangle of vines.

Great-horned Owl

Before you wonder how in the world we could spot an owl in that mess, I'll tell you the truth. Connie and I didn't find this owl at all - the crows found him. A good trick to finding owls and hawks in the woods is to listen for crows, Blue Jays or other birds going crazy. Chances are that they found a raptor that they want to harass into leaving their woods.

Crows harrassing Owl

Not bad for staying home huh? And much cheaper too.

Cams

One of the best things about the Internet is the ability for people like me to be able to post information to this random blog and have others read it for a laugh or to learn something or just pass the time.  Couple the Internet with video cameras and you get a "Cam". Cams let you peer into the secret lives of animals via a web browser and pass the time watching and learning.  Here are a few cams that are hot right now.  The best is the Bald Eagle nest in Hanover PA. Before you click the link to start watching live video, check out these photos from a recent snow storm.  Here is Mom completely covered in snow.

Snowy Mom

Here she is shaking it off after the snow stopped.

Shaking off the snow

And here is the snow covered nest showing the eggs safe and sound.

Eggs are safe and sound

All photos were copied from the Internet and credited to whoever captured the images from the cam.

Here is the link to watch the live action. The eggs are still not hatched. WARNING - once you click the link, you may end up watching for hours skipping lunch and dinner. It sucks you in.

Eagle Cam :  http://hdontap.com/index.php/video/stream/bald-eagle-live-cam  

Another cam that is capturing everyone's attention is the Great Horned Owl nest in Savannah Georgia. The owls in the south are further along than our owls, so the babies are already hatched. Once again, I warn you that this will suck you in for the entire day watching the babies bob around the nest.

Owl Cam :  http://hdontap.com/index.php/video/stream/great-horned-owl-cam

Anyway, it is something to enjoy while we wait for our beloved warblers to start their northward journey.  

Fun With Owls

This weekend was packed with major birding events. It started on Friday night with a Warbler Workshop followed by a field trip to Belleplain State Park on Saturday and another field trip on Sunday to Tinicum. I'll tell you all about that in the next post. This post is all about what happened after the big weekend when I was supposed to be casually visiting my friends in Elkins Park. I borrowed a sump pump from Tim so that I could drain and clean the pond - which I did in between all of the bird events.

I stopped over to Tim and Amy's around 6 PM. I was telling them about how we saw a Great Horned Owl nest on our field trip. Amy said that she had never seen an owl. Now, I know that they have owls in their neighborhood because I've heard them hooting. Just then, we heard a bunch of crows going crazy. I boldly said - you wanna see an owl? We walked to the end of the street in the direction of the crows and there is was - an adult Great Horned Owl being harassed.  Man, I looked like a genius! Luckily, Barbara's scope was in the back of the car, so I set it up on the sidewalk so that Amy could get a good look at the owl.

Then I remembered that I had the iPhone adaptor, so we took some video to show to Evelyn (HH) who was preparing dinner for the gang. Click on the video to play it.

You can imagine that 3 people with a spotting scope on the sidewalk in Elkins Park PA would draw some attention. It did. We showed about a dozen people the owl as they walked past with dogs and kids. People stopped their car to ask us what we were doing.  It was fun to show the kids an owl. But it got even more fun when we found the nest hole with a fluffy baby owl sitting in it!

The baby was a crowd-pleaser for sure. The neighborhood kids couldn't get enough of the owlet. The dads couldn't get enough of the scope with the iPhone attachment. Here is a photo of both.

Enthusiastic Owl Watchers - Elkins Park PA

The baby never did take his first flight while we were there. He wanted to. He should be out of the nest today. I'm going back to check on them and will keep you posted. Thanks again to Barbara for allowing me to keep the scope in my car. This would have never been a success without it.

Quick Post

Great-horned Owl babies are really funny looking. I can't resist taking photos of them on the rare occasion that I actually get to see them. Now is the time of year to see the white fur balls in the nest with Mom.  I had a great opportunity to photograph this scene last week in Palmyra NJ.

Great-horned Owls

Some amateur guy with a little camera got too close to the tree trying to photograph the raccoon that you saw a few days ago in my other post and scared Mom out of the nest.  Here are the babies looking for Mom.  Take a close look and you can see the "horns" already trying to poke out of their fluffy heads.

Owlets

On my quest to be competitive in this stupid contest, there are some common birds that seem to be avoiding me.  One of them is the White-crowned Sparrow, a bird that is not "common" by any means, but I thought I would have run across one given the fact that I have been out birding like a nut.  I finally got the bird at Bombay Hook last weekend.  Whew.

White-crowned Sparrow

Whatta Hoot

This is an owl weekend for us nerds.  Lori saw a lifer Long-eared Owl in Pennsylvania (not allowed to tell you exactly where due to birding ethics) while and Connie, Tara and I saw nesting Great Horned Owls AND Burrowing Owl in the same day in Florida!  Good day for owls.

The Great Horned Owl pair took over the local Bald Eagle nest after the eagles abandoned it.  The sad story is that the baby eagle died after eating bad food, so the eagles had no more use for the nest this year.  The owls saw a great location in move-in condition and did just that.  The female is sitting on eggs now while the male sits in a nearby pine tree and keeps watch. Here is the female in the nest:

She is only visible because the resident squirrel just ran around the nest to harass her.  You may be wondering why a squirrel would take it's life into it's hands by harassing an owl - because the owl nest is actually built on top of the squirrel's nest!  Apparently, it is a daily show.  She is NOT amused.

Here are a few shots of the male owl preening in a nearby tree:

I call this one "Fur Ball".  This is actually the back of the owl. He is preening his back on this shot.

I call this one "Pew, Is that me?" because it looks like the owl is smelling his arm pit.

I call this one "Wink, Wink".  The owl is still all fluffed up from preening. 

Finally, if an owl could moon you, this is what it would look like - "Moon Shot"

About 5 minutes after leaving the Great Horned Owl nest, we ended up at the Burrowing Owl's well, burrow.  The sad story here is that this guy had a family that ended up dead.  Different stories tell the story as lawn mower accident, angry real estate agent murder, and cat attack. Any way you slice it, its sad to know that this guy is alone for the season.  Here is the little guy sitting outside of the burrow today keeping tabs on the local crows:

There are no photos of the Long-eared Owl.  Lori was lucky enough to see it let alone photograph it.