Owl Diary: Saturday 1/19
The east owl rewarded park visitors this morning with a display of behaviors not often seen. Most days, the only action the owls show is to swivel their heads. Today the east owl (1) preened and pecked at an itch, (2) had a confrontation with a ground squirrel and made itself very big, (3) Fluffed itself up and stretched out one leg, (4) dove into a burrow and stayed out of sight for 30 seconds, then (5) popped up again, (6) yawned, or something very similar to a yawn, and finally (7) preened and pecked at an itch again. That’s a lot of action for a Burrowing Owl in the daytime, all shown in the video below, and it had park visitors glued to their binoculars or to my camera screen to take it all in. The owl, by the way, completely ignored its fan club, rarely throwing even a glance in our direction.
Meanwhile the north owl made its growing coterie of followers also very happy simply by being there, lovely in profile against the blue water.
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