Tweeters,

Well, I got sick and tired of being on the sidelines. So I caught a
flight to Spokane this morning and visited Mr. Northern hawk owl in
Cheney. The plane took off at 10:00 AM and I was viewing the owl by
12:05 PM. Very accommodating little guy.

I first saw the owl near the top of one of the poplars that line the
southern edge of the square in front of Pence Union (sp?) Building.
He patiently waited while I used the facilites in the building, and
then flew off as soon as I got my binocs on him. The rest of the time
he stayed in the (three) maple (?) trees just south of the Union
Building, going back and forth between the western-most one and the
middle one.

I had the good fortune to watch the owl retrieve an apparently cached
meal and then eat it. The western-most maple had a branch apparently
broken off from snow or something, and the owl flew to that branch and
rummaged around in a thick area, perhaps a crack, for a while, looking
up every so often. Then suddenly it had what looked like a good-sized
field mouse in one foot. It flew to another branch and proceded to eat
the mouse like an ice cream cone. It held it in its left foot, so
that I could easily see the medium length bare pink tail hanging down,
and that it had gray fur. At the other end, it ate the head in
several bites. It then put the mouse in it's right foot and gulped
the entire remaining portion down.

Then it cleaned and preened for a while, flew to another branch, and
got sleepy. I wonder if it was a coincidence that it ate at noon? And
it stayed right there while I hiked way back to my car, drove it to
the "15 minutes between signs" parking spaces, and set up my scope. It
was still there when I left around 1:00 or so. What an interesting
looking bird!

It seems that everyone on campus knows about the bird, or at least
that there is some special bird around. One fellow told me that it
will head sometimes over towards the phys-ed building into some pine
trees there.

Bob Mauritsen
rhm at ms.washington.edu