At 08:40 PM 11/18/98 -0800, Ruth Taylor wrote:

>I suspect that if it had been some other rare owl out of typical habitat, it
>would have been left alone to figure out where to go next.

You mean, like the snowy in Seattle two winters ago? :)

> Unfortunately,
>it's a symbol of old growth forest, so it was probably the *political*
>habitat that was the concern. Spotted owls have been killed and mutilated
>and delivered to various federal agencies.
>The first one I saw, thanks to a biologist friend, went to sleep on a
>moss-covered limb about 25 feet from us, after letting us photograph him at
>leisure. It was wonderful! This is said to be fairly typical behavior.

Strix owls are notoriously unaware of people. After all, they roost in
the day and are hard to spot. I know of great horned owls that are just
as unaware, or probably more properly unconcerned. Such as the ones I've
shot so frequently at Fields Oasis in SE Oregon (the ones which decorate
my web page).

The same holds true for many owl species. Yet, Strix sp. owls are probably
most commonly obtuse about people.

Perhaps it is their forest habitat, where few people spot them, along with
their nocturnal habits (even great horneds will hunt in the day, but Strix
seem mostly to just sit in the day) that is the source of this behavior.

I know from banding hawks in Nevada that we do get merlins, and occasionally
accipiters, that are pretty much clueless about people. Accipiters hang
about the aviary when flights get crazy, and some of those just ignore
people. Undoubtably they've never SEEN a people or maybe even a large
mammal before and don't recognize us as a threat.

Owls seem to show this (supposed) cluelessness (I'm not sure that being
clueless of a non-traditional threat says much, after all
the inhabitants of Hiroshima reacted the same way when they saw one,
rather than hundreds, of B-29s appear over their city) even more
frequently. Camo seems to serve them well in nature...


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net