Owls

Wednesday, 2-20-08

It was a wonderful evening.  After a few nights without owls, I got to see both of them copulate, saw one of them with a mouse and best of all, we might have discovered their nest cavity.

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It’s a blurry pictures, but I’m sure that the owl is holding a mouse.
Other Birds

Ring-necked Ducks

Thanks to a posting by Jack Meyer, pointing out Ardith Bondi’s discovery, I knew to be on the lookout for three Ring-necked Ducks.  I found them sleeping on the Reservoir.  They woke up after something startled a large group of gulls. This was a new species for my Central Park list.

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Female
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Male
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Both the male and the female could roll over 90 degrees to preen.  When they did so, they didn’t look like the pictures in the field guides!  Birders beware.
Owls

Sunday, 2-17-08

I had a family dinner on Sunday, but Jean sent this wonderful report…

Oh Bruce, oh Bruce, oh man did you pick the wrong night not to be there. We had such lovely stuff this evening – owls for most of an hour, lost one or the other for a few minutes at a time, but almost always had at least one and very often both.

Flyout was earlier than it was before the Friday-Saturday blank – 5:40 out the back door, short flight north, then north again. Never did see the other come out of that cavity – just materialized near us, down in ravine, as has happened so frequently. One of them was eating something, for a long time, on a branch right over our heads while the other was nearby. Later they were together here or there – usually in woods between path and Drive – mostly just sitting near each other, but also two short copulations.

Best part was two together for a very long time on a fat horizontal branch directly over the path: he was holding a mouse in his beak, came ooching along the branch and offered it to her. She didn’t seem to be interested (maybe she was the one who had already stuffed herself earlier?). He kept picking it up, showing it to her, putting it down at her feet, picking it up again and holding it. Finally – this is maybe 10 MINUTES! later – he decided if she really didn’t want his mouse he would go off somewhere and eat it himself (or cache it somewhere, maybe – we lost him after that). We started heading back about 6:50, and she was still on that branch.