Urban Hawks

Sadly, without knowing it, Christmas Day was a “Birding Bob Owl” tour. He played calls ten minutes before the normal fly out, causing the bird to return the calls and fly out prematurely. Unfortunately, this prevented all of those watching from seeing the normal stretching routine of the owl. Even with the owl in plain view calls were played repeatedly moving the owl around The Ramble. At one point a high intensity flashlight was shown on the owl, and it quickly flew off.

Bob’s group saw the owl, but not its normal behavior. A friend described these tours as fast food birding, quick and easy but with empty calories.

Luckily, all was not lost this evening. After the show was over, the owl settled down, caught a bird roosting in leaf litter and ate it.

It was a strange evening weather wise. It was near 60 degrees, with high wind gusts and a brief rain shower. The owl had a relaxed fly out, and stayed close to the roost site before giving us the slip.

For about 45 minutes before fly out a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk makes lots of cries from various perches around the owl’s roost. The Barred Owl answers back, just before fly out.

The evening was enjoyable. The owl gave great looks in the roost tree, flew off to look for squirrels, and then went off to a Spruce Tree across the East Drive, which we would learn a week later was home to a roosting Cooper’s Hawk.

On days where this Barred Owl has a quiet afternoon, it spend time hunting near the roost site. Today, it went to the ground twice and spent a good deal of time giving the small quiet group watching the owl lots of good views before flying out to sight.