owls
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Pacific Great Horned
I didn’t recognize this owl at first. Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) run rather darker in the shadowed forests of the Pacific northwest, under all those Douglas-firs and dripping epiphytes. They also don’t have orange faces, as our eastern birds do. This female is 16 years old and has lived at the Portland Audubon Nature Sanctuary’s wildlife rehab…
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Owlet
A Barn Owl (Tyto alba) toddler, looking rather alien, can just be glimpsed inside this nest box via long focus. Rather unique looking, Barn Owls are found all over the world, with some 46 recognized subspecies (!), including one on the Galapagos that is half the size of the North American version. Island dwarfism in…
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Just Another Urban Great Horned Owl
Bubo virginianus trying to look like a branch, but also occasionally vocalizing in the middle of the day. This is the owl who makes the classic hop-hoo-hoo.
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Owls In Culture
Did you know Florence Nightingale had a pet Little Owl? She rescued it and named it Athena, after the Greek goddess, who was ssociated with owls (so much so that the binomial for this European species is Athene noctua). When Nightingale — the first person named after the English version of Firenza, by the way,…
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Turf and Owl
I’ve been reading Neil MacGregor’s Germany: Memories of a Nation, a deeply thought-provocking work even with its sprawling and superficial, in the best sense, scope. I wanted to make a note of Dürer’s famous rhinoceros, highlighted in a chapter on the master, in these pages of blog, but a pebble dropped into the mines of…
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Who Wow!
Three Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) were recorded in Brooklyn (Kings Co.) during the Christmas bird count. Wow! Yes, this is one of the most common owl species in North America, found from backyards to deserts, but three of these big birds in the borough seems pretty good (I know of three others elsewhere in…
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Still Watching
You can see, in the snow, the footprints of those who have been walking right up to this roost. I’m good from here, though, on the road, perhaps 50 yards away, and the very limited angle of view — a few feet either way would obscure us — where owl and I can stare at…
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Backyard and Beyond 