Friday, 3-10-06
Uneventful fly out this evening. No sign of the kids. The female had been basking in the sun and warm weather all afternoon according to Cal.
I think I got the first shot of what looks to be a band this evening.
Uneventful fly out this evening. No sign of the kids. The female had been basking in the sun and warm weather all afternoon according to Cal.
I think I got the first shot of what looks to be a band this evening.
An uneventful evening, with the mother being the only one seen. Hopefully, it’s just the noise from the traffic, and nothing else that’s keeping us from seeing glimpses of the kids.
I couldn’t go to the fly out today but got this report from Jean…
"The little cat-faced owl, the one we’ve been calling "she," was in doorway of hole as usual when I got to the tree at 5:40. Richard had been there for 10 minutes already, and said he had seen her earlier in the afternoon as well. She was fairly deep in the hole, only the head showing, with chin resting on sill, until right at 6:00 one of those street-sweeping machines went by slow, roaring, the vibrations must go right up the trunk and she immediately stood up, one foot draped over the edge. Flyout was about 10 minutes later, very low, and slightly more southerly than usual.
There was a small group of watchers by then Liz, Martha, Gabriel and one or two others and everyone kept a pretty careful watch on the hole, waiting for owlets to show, but no one saw any movement at all. People began to head for home around 6:30, Liz and I stayed another 10 minutes, then took a little walk around by the horse path to listen for possible fledgers hissing for supper: nope, pretty quiet. General feeling is they’re too young to be out yet….
Oh, by the way remember that afternoon when the Cooper’s Hawk hit the streetlight, and we thought she might have caught something? Well, somebody does live in that lamp, though don’t know who saw just a quick sparrow-size movement out of corner of eye."
Tonight, we all arrived after about 5:45. We only saw one child, with no sign of the mother. She may have left early to get a head start on feeding her children all by herself.
Early in the morning this European Starling was trying to move into the owl’s cavity.
Still no sign of the father, but lots of pictures of the mother and her children in the late afternoon.