A barred owl! A barred owl!
This is the best I could do with the Lumix point-and-shoot, zoomed all the way, to x30. It’s at the far end of our garage; Kevin says “40 yards”. I don’t know my owls, but this looks like a barred owl, to judge from my cheeseball Golden Guide (I chose it because it had images of bird calls, which fits my brain.)
It moved its head about every two to four seconds.
Alll the way to the right....
Around...
And alllll the way to the left.
When I compare these shots to anything Walter Kitundu does, I just have to laugh. That’s OK. It’s my first photograph of a barred owl, which I hear in the woods occasionally. It’s spying on all the little buggers who live in our pole barn – it’s hanging out where I hang out, before I head up into the woods. How cool is that?
Oh man, this gave me goosebumps! How cute is he?! And how cool that he was so close to the house and you were able to get a bunch of pictures of him too. Awesome.
ReplyDeleteMy barred owl story is from the spring of 2010 when I was a bike ride through a local park shortly before sunset. I heard an owl hooting very close to the road but I couldn't see him, so I dropped my bike in the grass and set off on foot into the woods to find him. Sure enough, within about a minute he flew to a pine tree right in front of me and I stalked him for a little while - it was so cool, it was the first time I'd ever seen an owl not in captivity. I didn't know what kind of owl was at the time, but he most certainly said "who cooks for you" to me, and that's the call of a barred owl according to Google!
LOVE owls, love this post!