John at Las Vegas Photo Blog posted a video of church bells ringing in Banff, Canada, which reminded me that I had recorded the bells ringing while on the bell towers at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, in 2018. I found the video and decided it was boring by itself because the bells at Notre Dame were very loud standing in the bell tower, and they didn’t have any variation other than a bunch of bells ringing at once. Therefore, I wrote a piece of music to go with the bells and put together a rather strange music video called Non-Tubular Bells. I include photos from Notre Dame in 2018 before the fire, pictures of Paris taken from the bell towers, video of the American Flag at our neighbor’s house, video of our neighbor’s dogs playing in the Rio Grande, and video of the Owlets flapping their wings and flying a little.
Tag: great horned owl
A Hop, A Skip, and A Jump
Little Baby Owl working on getting his wings last night.
Dinnertime
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.
But Mama…
Hello World!
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.”
Mr. & Mrs. Owl
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:
Owl by Day, Beavers by Night
Pear Blossoms
Abstraction
Twilight Owl
Off Center & Not Even 