Subject: interesting owl (fwd)
Date: Jul 22 10:17:05 2000
From: Tom Foote - footet at elwha.evergreen.edu




Tweets--

thought you might be interested in this owl behavior.

Tom


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: interesting owl

Yesterday around 1 in the afternoon...hot for the Seattle area approaching
80. I'm sitting
in my truck drinking a Pepsi between jobs. I'm sweating. Robins and crows
are making a ruckus on a hillside about 45 to 50 yards away. I start
looking for the possibility of an owl. I know great horns nest in the
little cannon between the homes. Maples, firs, and 4 or 5 locus in an area
that has just had the brush cleared...I can tell because there are no black
berries where I had hunted rabbits a few years earlier..... Still no
owl--didn't think I would see it in the tree at this distance anyway... But
the robbins and crows are acting like it is on the ground. I start looking
for a cat. But usually not that much shouting over a cat. Then I see it. A
great horned sitting on the bare ground right out in the open.... I think,
baby but to late in year, wounded owl but it is moving around, horns up just
sitting on small mound of dirt.?? More stuff goes through my mind and non
makes sense. The owl is bending over as if eating something but no visible
furry prey.....it is hot and the owl just moving around slowly on the mound
of dirt???? I look at my watch again and 25 minutes in the hot sun has past
and I figure I had better go pick up the injured owl...but it doesn't act
injured....it bends forward and stretches it's wings over it's head? Looks
just fine and keeps bending over and pecking at something and even foots
almost playfully at the dirt.... Finally it flies just fine almost
vertical into the locus... It has been 35 to 40 minutes (my recorded time
for sighting) in the hot sun right out in the open. I slowly walk over to
the area and pass right under the owl...looks like a healthy adult male. I
check out the spot where he has been messing around and it is a pile of clay
soil that was spaded out of a hole. The clay is hard and dry. I could see
beak like grooves and scratch like marks form talons in the hard clay...no
kidding....go figure.... It gets better. I cautiously walk around to
take another look at the owl and THUD he casts up a great big casting as I'm
stand there watching!!! I slowly walk over and pick up the very moist
slimy casting with bits disolving clay stuck to it. The owl flies off to
the woods and I take the casting back to the truck and tease it apart. A
couple small leg bones from a small rabbit and rabbit hair and all the rest
of the casting is made of dry and green grass, stems and blades of grass.
It was kinda pasted together with a slimy stuff colored just like the clay
if were wet. The reason I know the wet color is I picked up some of the
dry hard gray clay and took it back to the truck and tasted the
stuff...tasted like dirt. The wet color looked like what was through the
whole casting.

My customer comes out wondering why I'm not working (I was not being paid by
the hour so he had no gripe other than the work was not getting done.) I
told him what I had just observed and he could see what to him looked like a
slimy dog turd in my lap on a baggie. You know he got interested and wanted
to know were the owl was. I pointed in the direction of the woods and not
more than 30 seconds later out flies the owl and lands in the locus. An
hour later I finish the job and leave with the owl still in the tree. 2
hours later I return and the owl is on the ground in the same spot on the
pile of clay just sitting there in broad day light. I scratched my head and
drove off. Today I drove by and looked at the clay and it looked as if it
was more chewed up that yesterday...

What do you make of all that..? If you have an owl and you don't give it
some sort of clay you might be depriving it of something special...Who
knows. I brought a couple hand full of the stuff home and over the weekend
will offer it to some of my hawks and just see what happens???? Who
knows???

Steve here still scratchen his head.