In late February, three young screech owls were found in the northern end of Central Park.

Marie was the epicenter of all the email traffic back and forth between rescuers, parks employees, and rehabbers.  The young owls were rescued on different days, a pair on one day, and the third on a different day.

For some reason, lights, plentiful food, that the reintroduced owls came from Rehabilitation and Rescue centers, and/or other factors have resulted in owlets being born a month or two too early in Central Park.  Young Screech owls are "branchers" before they fly, and their early birth when trees are without leaves seems to lead to problems.

In case the young owls could be reunited with their parents, an effort to find the parents was launched in case it made sense to reunite the young owls with their parents.  Last year’s 75th Street owl watchers went up for a few evenings, but we didn’t find the parents and gave up looking.

On March 13th, we all got a wonderful note from Chris:

"Positive visual sighting at 9PM of one mature Eastern Screech Owl on bridle path near ballfields, where Bruce Yolton was known to take photographs last year.

It flew to a branch within 5 feet of me, perching, without fear, for a good five minutes, responding with little hooty whoops to my whinnying, then flew off.

Good birding!

Chris and Fig"