With the weather just a little warmer, we got to witness the male arrive, copulate twice with the female, and then return with a mouse for his mate.  They copulated again, he took went. She coughed up a pellet and then ate her mouse.

I only had a point and shoot camera with us, so I couldn’t capture the moments.

Tonight, Robert Decandido led another of his owl tours.  Luckily, since he rarely does any field work he played his recording in the wrong area.  The frigid temperatures and high winds has the female staying close to her cavity.  I’m glad she didn’t get tricked into going out into the cold by Robert Decandido. 

The female made a few brief calls after it was dark, came out of her cavity and joined the male on a small tree.  Caroline thinks they copulated, but I didn’t see it.  The female owl quickly returned to her cavity and the male went south towards the Recreation Center just like last night.

Searches around the Recreation Center and the lower part of the Loch didn’t locate the male.   When we returned to the female’s cavity, she was perched in it.  After a few minutes, she went back inside.  One quirk of this cavity seem to be, that the female needs to leave the cavity and turn around, to get back inside.

It was too cold to see if the male would return with food or female would be going out to meet him. 

With subfreezing temperatures and a wind chill near zero, the female’s first appearance in her cavity was until 5:20.  The cavity is in a London Plane tree that was used by an owl in 2006.

The female didn’t like the cold and wind.  She came out of the cavity three times only to return back to the warmth of the cavity before finally leaving.  She made a few short calls, but nothing like the calls she makes in warmer weather. 

It was so cold we left her sitting on a tree branch at 7:00 p.m.  (The owls usually give us the slip, rather then us leaving with them in view.)

The male was not seen or heard the entire evening.

After being away for a week, and learning of continued harassment of the Eastern Screech-Owls by Robert DeCandido, I was eager to see how the owls were doing.

They’ve continued there shift south.  Both owls were in a tree twenty feet north on the northern edge of the North Meadow.  Just after I found them both, the male went across the ball fields towards the Recreation Center.  (That area has lots of cavities and rodents, so it will be interesting to see if this continues to be an area of interest.)

The female stayed close to where I found her, alternating between two trees, before after about twenty minutes, she flew north.

Happy 2010!

A search for cavities around the Loch at dusk, yielded an American Woodcock.  After dusk we found the male fishing in his normal spot. We looked for the female but couldn’t find her, so we left for the evening.

Luckily, as I was leaving the park, I found both owls on a high tree branch east of the West Drive around 102nd Street copulating. They then both went down to the Pool. I lost track of the male, but the female was very vocal in the trees near the large Willow on the east side of the Pool.

Dr. Robert DeCandido lead another “owl tour” tonight.  He spend 25 minutes loudly playing a tape of Eastern Screech-Owl calls.  The crickets heard on the tape were amusing with 12 inches of snow on the ground.

As usual, DeCandido played the tape without interruption, fifteen minutes before the owl’s fly out time.  He managed to attract a Red-tailed Hawk with his tape.  Luckily the owls must have learned to ignore the tape, or they may have become dinner tonight.

It’s really too bad Dr. Decandido is so heavy handed with these owls.  If he had just been willing to wait until they started calling naturally he would have been able to treat his tour to some wonderful sights.

But instead he made owl watching impossible tonight.  Decandido’s doctorate is in botany.  Why can’t he just go back to plants!