Pages

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Meet the owl family

In my new neighborhood in Orange, CA, I have discovered a family of Great Horned Owls. There are two adults, and two babies. One of the adults we have named "Buster", due to its large and rather ragged appearance, and the other adult I dubbed "Smoothie" because of its contrasingly smoother plumage compared to Buster. Both the babies are fuzzy and adorable! Every evening, around 8:00 p.m., I go out to see what the owls are up to. As it gets dark, the owls get active. Buster usually hoots softly (a very soft, short "Who-who"), and the babies screech for food. A couple times we've seen the babies feeding on prey that one of the adults caught, and once I watched as Buster ripped apart a small songbird (maybe a California Towhee), eating most of it and feeding the remainder to the babies. They almost always hang out in the same few trees near the neighborhood lake.


No comments: