Owls (Wild Only)
View allAll Photos Tagged owl
Seeing this Barred Owl for the first time in the wild was the absolute highlight of this trip to Vancouver Island. I saw "something" fly and then saw robins bothering him. He sat patiently for a few minutes allowing me to get this shot.
Barn Owl - Tyto Alba
Like most owls, the barn owl is nocturnal, relying on its acute sense of hearing when hunting in complete darkness. It often becomes active shortly before dusk and can sometimes be seen during the day when relocating from one roosting site to another. In Britain, on various Pacific Islands and perhaps elsewhere, it sometimes hunts by day. This practice may depend on whether the owl is mobbed by other birds if it emerges in daylight. However, in Britain, some birds continue to hunt by day even when mobbed by such birds as magpies, rooks and black-headed gulls, such diurnal activity possibly occurring when the previous night has been wet making hunting difficult. By contrast, in southern Europe and the tropics, the birds seem to be almost exclusively nocturnal, with the few birds that hunt by day being severely mobbed.
Barn owls are not particularly territorial but have a home range inside which they forage. For males in Scotland this has a radius of about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the nest site and an average size of about 300 hectares. Female home ranges largely coincide with that of their mates. Outside the breeding season, males and females usually roost separately, each one having about three favoured sites in which to conceal themselves by day, and which are also visited for short periods during the night. Roosting sites include holes in trees, fissures in cliffs, disused buildings, chimneys and haysheds and are often small in comparison to nesting sites. As the breeding season approaches, the birds move back to the vicinity of the chosen nest to roost.
Once a pair-bond has been formed, the male will make short flights at dusk around the nesting and roosting sites and then longer circuits to establish a home range. When he is later joined by the female, there is much chasing, turning and twisting in flight, and frequent screeches, the male's being high-pitched and tremulous and the female's lower and harsher. At later stages of courtship, the male emerges at dusk, climbs high into the sky and then swoops back to the vicinity of the female at speed. He then sets off to forage. The female meanwhile sits in an eminent position and preens, returning to the nest a minute or two before the male arrives with food for her. Such feeding behaviour of the female by the male is common, helps build the pair-bond and increases the female's fitness before egg-laying commences.
Barn owls are cavity nesters. They choose holes in trees, fissures in cliff faces, the large nests of other birds such as the hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) and, particularly in Europe and North America, old buildings such as farm sheds and church towers. Buildings are preferred to trees in wetter climates in the British Isles and provide better protection for fledglings from inclement weather. Trees tend to be in open habitats rather than in the middle of woodland and nest holes tend to be higher in North America than in Europe because of possible predation.
This bird has suffered declines through the 20th century and is thought to have been adversely affected by organochlorine pesticides such as DDT in the 1950s and '60s.
Nocturnal birds like the barn owl are poorly monitored by the Breeding Bird Survey and, subject to this caveat, numbers may have increased between 1995-2008.
Barn owls are a Schedule 1 and 9 species.
Population:
UK breeding:
4,000 pairs
Europe:
110-220,000 pairs
This Barred Owl gave us a delightful experience during a visit to Brazos Bend State Park. We inadvertently flushed it from next to the water up into a low tree where he sat for quite some time while we took way too many photos.
Strix varia
_MG_2236-web
This cute snowy owl was waiting for his performing trainer's instruction at the Lisbon zoo. So amazing to see how this bird has been trained to perform and the relationship he has with his trainer.
Still waiting for the first winter owl of the 2021/22 season. Migrant Snowy Owls and a Northern Hawk Owl have been reported in the province recently.
Huge thank you to Ian howells wildlife photography for a great session in the hide. Only the 1 Tawny visit due to the weather but that was enough for me! Another shot off the list!
The silent hunter. The Short-eared owl hunts in daytime, but he flies as silent as his nocturnal cousins. A truly beautiful bird to observe in action.
Short-eared owl (Asio flammeus).
© 2022 Marc Haegeman. All Rights Reserved.
Owls were mostly nocturnal
and this one must be quite annoyed at us taking photos of it.
It was perched on an old tree trunk in the dry decidous forest of Kirindy Reserve.
Kirindy Reserve is south of Morondava on the west side of the Madagascar island which is not as wet as the rain forests on the east coast.
Many thanks for your visit, comments, invites and favs...it is always appreciated.
HMBT