Howdy Tweets,

Thanks to everyone who has posted such helpful directions to the
Northern Hawk Owl outside of Chelan, WA. My mom and I drove out
yesterday and found it in the somewhat open area at about milepost 6.3
on Union Valley Road. We lurked there for around an hour and
eventually the bird landed in the trees right at the roadside and gave
us some amazing looks. I took a panorama photo there and posted it on
flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74737339 at N05/6787562639/

If you use a GPS, I took down the coordinates: N 47?54.156' W 120?00.822'

Thanks Denny for posting your pictures of the "normal" and "deflated"
N. Hawk Owl! It really would blend in with the tree tops when it
shrank down into the smaller shape. When we first saw the bird it was
perched about 1/3 to 1/2 of a mile from the road in a pine. It
occasionally would drop from the perch and appear a minute or two
later in another perch. These relocations seemed to coincide with
Raven fly overs, but we weren't sure if that made sense... I think
your photos make it pretty clear that the Hawk Owl didn't want to be
noticed by those ravens!!


~Joe Meredith

Seattle, WA


I searched along Union Valley Road north of Chelan for an hour for the
Northern Hawk-Owl but couldn't find it. I have always felt the best way to
find a rare bird is to find the people looking at it. The next best way is
to talk to the people who saw it an hour earlier. Thank you to the two
birders I talked to who said it had moved two miles up the road, to
milepost 6.3. There is a pullout on the west side of the road at that spot.

Something interesting happened while I was watching the owl. A raven flew
over and the owl seemed to deflate its feathers. It was just a narrow tube
of an owl. I put two photos of the Northern Hawk-Owl in the new photos
folder on my website, one showing the deflated posture. I am interested to
know if others have seen birds do this. Here is the link to the photos:

http://www.granstrand.net/gallery/newphotos

Denny Granstrand
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