Owl Talk

[Marvis Collett <mcslcutah at mindspring dot com>]

Good morning,

On Thursday, July 15, we observed a Downey Woodpecker crawling into one 
of our birdhouses--which has always been empty.  It stayed a long time 
and I would like to think it spent the night in that house.  Last night, 
Friday, July 16, while looking for the woodpecker to return we were 
extremely surprised to see a young Western Screech Owl perched on top of 
the same birdhouse (this would have been about 6:00).  We observed it 
for about 30 minutes at which time I called Robin to see if she wanted 
to chance its remaining until she could get to our house.  She arrived 
in about 15 minutes.  We continued watching for an hour and a half as 
the owl survey our yard. All of our resident birds (grosebeaks, jays, 
gold, lesser, and house finches, doves, quail, robins, woodpeckers, 
chickadees, and sparrows disappeared for about a half of an hour and 
then they all returned.

All of this time the owl sat perched, ignoring a party in our neighbor's 
yard, ignoring me and my new camera (it even ignored my flash as the sun 
was disappearing), looking up, down, around. Just as we had about 
decided that the owl must be injured and we were thinking about 
rehabilitation it flew down to a lower spot for a few seconds and then 
swooped across the yard to neighbor's tree where it seemed to be content 
for the rest of the evening.

I guess you know where I will be tonight.  If anyone wants to chance its 
still being around tonight e-mail me and I will give you directions as 
to where I last saw it.

Marvis Collett


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