Urban Hawks

On Sunday it felt bitterly cold, (25F with 25MPH winds).  It took awhile for an owl to appear in the hole.  The first sighting was around 5:45 p.m.  As on Saturday, there had a jockeying for position with the two owls exchanging spots before the fly out.

We also got to see the two of them together twice, a rare event. Quite a change from the earlier behavior of 30 minutes of one followed by 2 minutes of the second!  Tonight, we also had the first observation of the owl who usually files out second, flying out first.

I was the first to arrive at the fly out on Saturday afternoon.  I was relieved to see the Eastern Screech-Owl, who was almost run over by a car on Friday, standing in the entrance to the tree cavity.

After the problems of Friday, the fly out was back to a later time.  But something new occurred, the two owls jockeyed for position.  When it came time to fly out the owls switched places a few times, before the male left followed by the female.

On Friday evening we had quite a scare.  The male Eastern Screech-Owl ran into a car while flying out.  Quick thinking by Lee, stopped another car from running over him.  We all felt that he was dead as he lay motionless on the road, but like Lazarus, he quickly arose and flew off into a nearby bush.

He stayed put and recovered from the shock for a long while as we all worried about him.  Then he flew off to a nearby branch and then soon he was off north out of sight.  His flight pattern seemed normal, but we continued to worry about him as we left the park.

The male wakes up and gives us a nice view of him before flying out for the evening.

Tonight for the first time, the male stayed nearby and allowed me to take a number of pictures of him post fly out.