Watching owls takes patience, but most importantly it requires you to do your best to stay out of the owl’s way. After six months, I wouldn’t say Flaco trusts me, but he does seem to know he can ignore me!

Tonight, after a noisy crowd that came to watch the fly out dispersed, Flaco was able to catch his first rodent. Then he sat on one of his favorite branches for what seemed like forever. At this point the other owl watchers, even the hard core ones, gave up on him and went home.

To my delight, and maybe because I was by myself, he then gave me over two hours of close looks in a brightly lit area. He spent over on hour on a fence near to a lamp post and hunted three more times. He only got interrupted three times, once by someone walking their dog, and twice by police cars. I did my best to keep my distance, but twice he flew very close to me.

I had a wonderful time with him on Sunday night. I’ve included a short video of him eating one rodent, most likely a White-footed Mouse. On the longer video, the rodents are at 1:19, 2:50, 10:10 and 13:40.