I had a nice evening watching a Great Horned Owl in Central Park. Except for an unexpected first flight, the evening was similar to Tuesday night.

This morning I went on a Linnaean Society of New York Central Park walk and we have 40 species, including a Bald Eagle and an Eastern Blue Bird. I went back to Central Park in the afternoon to bird some more and saw the Barred Owl I had seen yesterday, and a Great Horned Owl. Not bad for a gray, cold mid-November day.

I spent an hour this afternoon at the Reservoir of Central Park, watching a Peregrine Falcon on the divider between the east and west side. It was just hanging out, but keep all of the gulls, including a Laughing Gull from resting on the divider.

On my walk home, I stopped in the Ramble to look for Fox Sparrows, which have just returned to the park this week. I found on on a path at the Evodia Field.

As I continued home, I ran across a group of birders watching a Barred Owl. The group was able to watch it make a few flights before loosing track of it. It made one attempt to catch a squirrel.

As the cold weather finally hits us, it’s nice to know we’ll have some fun birds in the park in the late fall and early winter.

A Great Horned Owl continues in the park. I caught up with it on Tuesday and Wednesday.

A highly cropped photograph taken on Friday of a Snowy Owl along the Hudson River Greenway, was posted on Twitter on Saturday. I wasn’t paying attention, but a friend emailed about it late in the afternoon. I wasn’t sure I was going to go look for it, but I didn’t have wine with dinner just in case. I got a text around 8:45 letting me know the owl was found, and I jumped into a cab.

The owl ate two Brown Rats over the course of about three hours, while perched on a mound of mulch inside a fenced in compound. It ate the first Brown Rat, left with the second, but then returned with the second rat within about twenty minutes. It didn’t finish eating the second Brown Rat until after midnight.

Just like the Snowy Owl in Central Park, this owl has found a safe, protected area to eat.

When the owl was hunting, and after it flew out after the second Brown Rat, gulls left their roost on the Javits Convention Center’s green roof. About fifty gulls scattered.

On Sunday, I went at dusk and waited until 10:00 pm. The owl wasn’t seen but around 200 gulls flew up from the Javits Convention Center roof around 9:00 pm, so the owl might still be in the area.

Visits on Monday and Tuesday showed no signs of the owl, and the Javits gulls roosted peacefully each night.

The Barred Owl that was in the park on Friday, continued use the same roost on Saturday. It was spotted catching and eating a Brown Rat on Friday night. I’m very concerned about the quality of prey in the park. I counted at least 10 rodent bait boxes in the park. While these could have snare traps, they most likely contain rodenticides. If this owl stays in the park, it will only be a few weeks before it is poisoned.