West Drive owl report

Screech-owl before flyout - 3/5/06
Photo by Bruce Yolton

From: JRDane
To: Marie Winn
Subject: Tuesday flyout
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006

Marie ­

The little cat-faced owl, the one we've been calling "she," was in doorway of hole as usual when I got to the tree at 5:40. Richard had been there for 10 minutes already, and said he had seen her earlier in the afternoon as well. She was fairly deep in the hole, only the head showing, with chin resting on sill, until right at 6:00 one of those street-sweeping machines went by ­ slow, roaring, the vibrations must go right up the trunk ­ and she immediately stood up, one foot draped over the edge. Flyout was about 10 minutes later, very low, and slightly more southerly than usual.

There was a small group of watchers by then: ­ Liz, Martha, Gabriel and one or two others ­ and everyone kept a pretty careful watch on the hole, waiting for owlets to show, but no one saw any movement at all. People began to head for home around 6:30. Liz and I stayed another 10 minutes, then took a little walk around by the horse path to listen for possible fledgers hissing for breakfast: nope, pretty quiet. General feeling is they're too young to be out yet....

Oh, by the way ­ remember that afternoon when the female Cooper's Hawk hit the streetlight, and we thought she might have caught something? Well, somebody does live in that lamp, though don't know who. ­ Saw just a quick sparrow-size movement out of corner of eye.

Jean

PS from Marie--Never heard of anybody but House Sparrows nesting in those lamp-posts.