Category: Great Horned owls

Beauties and the Trees

Timothy Price69 Comments

Resa posted Art Gowns ~ Femme Finale at https://wp.me/p3qQOA-2qQ yesterday. She has used her tree, Holly’s tree, and Marina’s tree in her Princess Blue Holly (PDH) series set in Paris, France. PBH battles Evilomlap to save the Art Gown models from his dastardly evil plans. Resa’s drawings are delightful, and her stories lots of fun. Her Art Gowns are fabulous works of art. The celebrates Resa, Princess Blue Holly, and all the Art Gown models, I’ve posted an aerial photograph that shows where all the trees all the women bloggers have claimed are on our property and the surrounding area. I also included the location of the tree that both owlets are in. Big Baby Owl flew over last night and the two owlets where so happy to be reunited after being apart for almost two weeks.

Trees

The mosaic below shows all the trees that are in the above aerial image. Mouse over the photos of the trees to match them to the aerial map:

1) Resa’s Tree
2) Holly’s Tangle Heart Tree
3) Marina’s Incognito Pear Tree behind Dr Huey
4) Dale’s Peach Tree & Nancy’s Nectarine to the right.
5) Owlets hugging after getting back together in the bosque.
6, 7, 8) Right to left: Lavinia’s, Susan’s and Teagan’s Trees
6, 7, 8) Left to right: Lavinia’s, Susan’s and Teagan’s Trees
9) Gabriela’s Tree
10) Tiffany’s Tree
11) Robin’s Tree
12) Lyn’s Tree
13) Gloria’s Tree
14) Mia’s Tree

 

Below are a series of roses from our garden. I did not identify the roses.

Owl Update

Timothy Price96 Comments
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Do I want to fly over to the bosque with Little Baby?

Big Baby Owl has been in a cottonwood tree between the irrigation ditch and the clearwater ditch for over a week now. Little Baby Owl flew over both ditches into a tree on the edge of the bosque next to Holly’s Tangle Heart Tree. I expected Big Baby to fly over to be with Little Baby last night, but she didn’t. She seems happy in the tree she’s in at the moment.

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Nah. I really like this tree.
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Little Baby Owl is on the tree on the left edge of the photo. He’s very difficult to see.
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Hey Big Baby! Are you going to fly over here?
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Are you talking to me?
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I’m certainly not talking to the stupid paparazzo on the ditch bank below.
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Oh! I don’t know. I really like this tree.
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Or you’re a chicken! He he he!
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Can you see my “mad dogs” you little runt?
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Talk to the paw!

Right after sundown, Mama Owl and Daddy Owl flew up into a tree just north of the owlets. They were perched like they were posing for portraits. Mama is behind Daddy.

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I went out at 6:00 am this morning to see if Big Baby Owl had flown over to the bosque with Little Baby Owl. I found Mama Owl perched next to Little Baby and Big Baby Owl nowhere to be found.

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Isn’t it a little early for you to be out Paparazzo?

Below is an aerial photo showing where the nest is and where the owls were last night. The owlets are still in the trees indicated on the aerial photo.

OwlsAerial

The blockheads at Word Press have introduced a block editor. I was stupid enough to try it. After an hour of attempting to put the post together, I could not get it to come out right at all. I finally trashed it and started from scratch in the standard editor, which took only 15 minutes to complete. I was so disgusted I walked out and talked to Big Baby Owl who is still in her favorite tree before I came back and redid the post. Blocks are for desktop publishing not browsers. If the block editor becomes the default editor, I’ll consider leaving Word Press again.

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Big Baby Owl sympathizing as best she can over me having to deal with WP blockheads.

Challenges

Timothy Price53 Comments

There seems to be all kinds of challenges in the blogosphere, mostly photo challenges, and writing challenges. Here are a few challenges I recorded.

The first challenge was the song that started out as a drum track that Joel put together. He sent me the track and gave me the challenge to make a song out of it. I laid down a bass track, followed by a rhythm guitar track. I made up a vocal track on the spot, so I have not written down the lyrics, then I laid down the lead guitar track. One take for each track. I named the song  Joel’s Beat.

 

The second challenge was when I was finally able to get my car washed (car washes had been closed under the lockdown). I washed my car and what did I get? Dust and muddy kitty prints all over the lid.

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The third challenge was for Big Baby Owl who had flown over to another branch on the cottonwood tree, then decided to climb the trunk of the tree to get up where Mama Owl was perched high above her. Big Baby Owl climbed and climbed, flapped her wings over the more difficult parts, and finally got into a fork in the tree about 10 feet from Mama Owl. She looked up at Mama Owl and Mama Owl flew off. Big Baby Owl was devastated. She just stood in the fork of the tree with her head bowed (click on the photos for an enlarged slide show).

 

The fourth challenge was photographing black Irises that are bleached purple in our intense sunshine. The irises look almost black to the naked eye, but properly exposed photos show how purple black really is.

 

The fifth challenge was doing super wide-angle photos of Spunk and living to write about it and post the photos.

 

Dinnertime

Timothy Price61 Comments
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Owlet out of the nest in the morning

The owlets are starting to get out of the nest. Last night I was checked on the owls well after sunset. Daddy Owl was hooting way up at the top of a cottonwood above the owlets. Soon Mama Owl brought home the bacon in what looked like a gopher. She perched with Daddy Owl for a few minutes before she flew down and gave the owlets the gopher for dinner. The three-minute video below is edited down to two minutes forty-five seconds of owl video from Daddy Owl hooting to Big Baby Owl hopping back into the nest with dinner followed by 15 seconds of credits.

Being well past sunset, I could only see outlines of the owls with my bare eyes. I increased the exposure on the video by two stops which let me at least see when the edges of things looked sharp when I focused on the owls. I had to focus manually and hope for the best. Daddy and Mama Owl were backlit, so the increased exposure was able to get their details pretty well. Once Mama Owl flew down to the owlets, the background became dark. I didn’t increase the exposure further, because the picture probably would have become very pixilated in the darkness. As it is I got the video pretty well focused and you can see some details in the owlets in full-screen.

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Owlet out of the nest after sunset.

Hello World!

Timothy Price36 Comments

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We went out to check on the owls yesterday morning, and one of at least two, but I’m guessing there are three, owlets popped his head up and said “Hello World!” Thus we start another season of “Watching the Owlets Grow.”

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Sunset View

Mr. & Mrs. Owl

Timothy Price52 Comments

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Mr. & Mrs. Owl sitting in a cottonwood across from their nest.

We walked down to check on the mama owl who’s been sitting in her nest for a little over a month. She and the daddy owl where sitting in a cottonwood across the irrigation ditch from their nest. Mr. Owl would hoot at Mrs. Owl and then she would peep. After he flew, I walked around to the other side of Mrs. Owl, and I could see she had something in the talons of her her left foot, but I could not make out what it was. She finally flew over to the nest and then we could see she had a gopher for her little ones. I expect we’ll start seeing the owlets poking their fuzzy heads up over the edge of the nest to look out at all the people standing on the ditch bank gawking at them in a couple of weeks.

Below is a short video of Mr. Owl hooting at Mrs. with wind and a pesky chainsaw in the background.

 

You can click on the photos in the group below to see each image enlarged:

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Mrs. Owl in the nest with her ear tufts blowing in the wind.