Just for fun I thought I'd post an entry that isn't about the Houston trip. We've been hearing our owls a lot lately. They live in the woods behind our house. Sometimes they sound distant, sometimes really close. One afternoon a couple of years ago we even saw one, sitting way up in a tree right by the house.
I found a nice webpage about owls where I was able to determine that these are barred owls. They live a long time and tend to nest in the same place year after year. Which makes me think that it's the same pair of owls we've been hearing all this time.
Their regular call is very "woo-hoo" owl-like, but their mating call is bizarre! It sounds like monkeys fighting in the trees over the house. Or maybe space aliens. I had an early morning radio show the first spring the owls were living here, and one time they started on that crazy hooting while I was walking to my car at 4:30 am. I didn't know what it was & it scared me so bad I nearly peed my pants.
I read that the main cause of death in barred owls is road kill. I worry about them sometimes because we live on such a busy road. But with lots of tasty voles and chipmunks and baby rabbits in the yard, maybe they don't need to hunt in the road.
Speaking of rabbits, Lina hasn't managed another kill. Mainly because we keep an eye on her every time she goes outside, and don't let her up into the woodsy part where the rabbits are living. We're hoping that by the time we get back from Houston, the rabbits will have all grown up and either gone somewhere else, or at least be too fast for Lina. Actually most of them probably will have become owl food, but I would be okay with that. As long as the owls don't bring the bodies to me like Lina does.
[There is another great web page called The Owl Cam where a guy rigged up a nest for a family of barred owls with a web cam inside the nest! With the owl cam and his telephoto lens, he can photograph their progress without disturbing them. Unfortunately it looks like the pair haven't come back this year, but you can still look at photos from previous years.]
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