Had a Visitor Today

[AndyM]

Barred Owl.

 

[Tughill Tom]

That's an awesome shot!

 

[bx tractorjoe]

I was watering my trees I planted a few months ago and this baby owl landed on my fence.. stood there for at least a few minutes.. pretty sure it was a younin

Picture sucks sorry..

 

[sheepfarmer]

I hear the barred owls around here all the time, but I've never seen one....

 

[SidecarFlip]

Nor have I but we have at least one living in the pine grove beside the barn. Very vocal birds. Keep the mice population down too.

 

[Magicman]

A magnificent creature. That water fountain picture is awesome. I wonder where it was when we were visiting Vancouver Island a year ago?

 

[bird dogger]

Very Cool!! Both the pic and the owl. I've never seen one of them around here either.

 

[imnukensc]

We have plenty of them around here, too. Took me awhile to figure out why I'd often see 2 or 3 flying around the back or side yard----lightning bugs! They eat them like crazy.

 

[AndyM]

They are quite the bird. "Who Cooks for You" is a call we hear a lot this time of year. It has been a real surprise how many different birds use the fountain to drink or bathe. Hummers love it too.

 

[Lil Foot]

Thought someone had revived my old thread:

Had a visitor over the last few days…..

The high country is so dry that this big boy decided to come in for a drink several times over the last week or so. He also brought his little brother a couple times, but we only had the camera handy for this shot. Range, 18 feet, through the screen on the window over the kitchen sink. He drank...

www.orangetractortalks.com

 

[Tornado]

We have a lot of owls and hawks around our place here as well. For our horses we now use big 75 gallon water troughs with automatic waterer's, but before we went to these we used small 2 gallon automatic watering buckets that I mounted between 2 wooden posts with 2x4's. It turned out to be the ideal perch for birds of prey to sit at these water buckets and eat their catches. We would routinely find small animal bones in the water buckets from left over meals. Since going to the larger metal troughs that just sit on the ground I havent seen these bones any longer, but they would be harder to spot in the trough if there were one or two in there, as we dont clean them as often as we did the small buckets. Its funny that 2 of the photos above of owls show them perched on water fountains. They may be using your fountains in much the same way - so look around the base for small bones. Cool pics.

 

[Stmar]

We have owls that live in the trees down by the creek, hear them all the time. At night I have seen them on the deck rail, they are so silent when they take off. One winter day I saw one kill a rabbit and take it into the overhang of the barn/corral to eat it, I found the only a leg left. Another time one stayed in the rafters of the overhang all day, figured they are like vampires and don't tolerate the daylight. They are the coolest creatures and are probably more abundant than we realize. Out on the prairie one day we went into an old abandoned barn and two Great Horned Owls were perched on the rafters, huge birds.

 

[Magicman]

So Owls are making "house calls" here too:

Reckon it could read the Welcome sign??

 

[AndyM]

Who knew they could read! Or maybe he was waiting for lunch to stick it's head out the hole...

 

[Magicman]

Yup, I wondered about that too. Bluebirds for supper.