Friday, March 05, 2010

proof of owls

I decided to take The Beast camera out to the barn this morning when I fed horses. Good decision! I hope to photograph the pair together some time, but this morning only the female was perched up high in the barn. She even allowed me stand below her for a few seconds and snap a few pics before she flew out of the barn and landed in a tree along the creek. I'm not sure what they normally do all day. When I was a kid we had owls in the barn, but that barn was HUGE and soooo much taller than this one, so they would tuck themselves up in the rafters and just sit. It's much closer proximity to human activity in this barn!



I had to go out to the tack room in the semi dark of evening tonight, and she flew out of the nest box! Yay!!!!

5 comments:

Sharon said...

Beautiful! All your photography is simply the best! You have such a great eye and hand!

Nancy K. said...

Oh, WOW! What an amazing bird.

So you are hoping they breed? Don't you worry about them taking your chickens?

Katherine Plumer said...

Thanks Jack & Jill!

Nancy K, yes, I am hoping they will breed. They are definitely showing interest in the nest box, so that's a good sign. I'm not worried about them taking chickens. Due to a very aggressive pair of Red Shouldered Hawks that live along the creek, as well as a thriving population of Cooper's Hawks, I really can't let the birds out anymore, so they're all in coops. I wouldn't worry about these barn owls even if my birds were out though. They hunt mostly at night (also late evening, early morning), times at which the chickens would be cooped up.

The thing I don't love about them is the pretty significant mess they make. I was joking this morning that I'm going to name them "Crap" and "Flap" except I'm not sure which one deserves which name. Basically I just need to adjust the setup of the barn according to their favorite places to crap... I'd rather that mess fall on the floor than on items I have to use!

Granny Annie said...

These are beautiful birds yet they still manage to get inside our chicken house at least once a year and kill a bird so I cannot love the owls. Every time we think we have closed the opening, they manage to find another. Even in our Kansas home the Owls would manage to get inside the coop.

Katherine Plumer said...

Ugh, sorry you've had a problem with them. I hope this pair doesn't become a problem for me!