Starship Asterisk*

meh

WOW! Thank you! You're right; I DO like that site, and I had no idea it existed! Thank you for posting it!!!!

My nearest owl (at the moment) is listed as being at the nearest Zoo, and an owl I've never seen (a Burrowing Owl) was listed as the second nearest. (My Owlet is actually the closest owl, as he is downstairs ignoring schoolwork almost as well as I am. ) I have several times heard Barred Owls when walking or biking on the C&O Canal towpath (I did a through trip of the C&O last fall) but I've never seen one there. Barred Owl: A friend and I were birding in the San Joaquin Valley (CA) and had an owl (a Barn Owl) almost fly through the open car window, which was very cool (cooler still that he didn't, and instead perched on a fence post so we could take pictures of him). It was the middle of the afternoon; we certainly hadn't expected to see an owl! We were looking particularly for Sandhill Cranes. I've seen a couple of Great Horned Owls (my avatar is a Great Horned) in the wild, including one sitting out in the open in the median of a highway during daylight; I almost ran off the road when I spotted him! (Usually the coolest bird I see in that median is a Red-tailed Hawk.)

Um, yeah. Maybe that's enough about owls from me...!

Thank you!!

I think someone said that owls are very stupid birds (as opposed to crows or parrots), why such a sympathy?

Oh, I like birds in general, actually. Owls are very cool; I've not heard of them being stupid generally (though I've often been a shining example of such, alas!); certainly crows are more clever, though. (Crows are very smart.) Owls are bird brains, but then, so are all birds! Owls depend on eyesight and/or hearing (depending on whether they are day or night hunters) and stealth for their hunting; the leading edge of their primary flight feathers are ... hmmm... fringed or serrated, I guess is how I'd put it, which makes their flight soundless. They are very good hunters, much more successful than most (if not all) other raptors.

The owl, a symbol of Athena, was used on possibly the most successful coinage in the history of man, the tetradrachma of Athens, used (going off memory here, so dates are approximate) from about 580 BC to ... 36 BC or thereabouts, IIRC. (Picture here.) Today, the Greek one Euro coin uses the owl almost exactly as it appears there; I think the owl there is very cute! (ETA: Greek Euro coin image)

Maybe that's it... they are just darn cute birds!

owlice wrote:My nearest owl (at the moment) is listed as being at the nearest Zoo, and an owl I've never seen (a Burrowing Owl) was listed as the second nearest.

We see owls fairly often, but this one lives near us:



We know it well, because we rescued it from some sort of undetermined injury four years ago, and it's a species that isn't common here.

makc wrote:I think someone said that owls are very stupid birds (as opposed to crows or parrots), why such a sympathy?

All birds are very intelligent- at the higher end of the scale. In intelligence tests, birds fair well against animals like cats and dogs. And amongst the birds, birds of prey tend to be quite intelligent. I don't think it likely that owls are stupid.

Oh, Chris, good for you for rescuing him!! (I would NOT want to run into that beak -- yikes!)

I find bird feathers just amazing; look at your owl, for example, at all the fine patterns and subtle shadings on each feather. They are so beautiful, each one a work of art.

Chris Peterson wrote: All birds are very intelligent- at the higher end of the scale. In intelligence tests, birds fair well against animals like cats and dogs. And amongst the birds, birds of prey tend to be quite intelligent. I don't think it likely that owls are stupid.

A lot of an owl's brain is taken up with processing visual information; owls are generally not trainable, the way a parrot is, nor clever in solving puzzles, as crows can be. (Crows need a different body, honestly; they are so confined by being birds, I think the smartest of them get frustrated!) So, not the smartest by the way people tend to measure intelligence in birds, but very successful in what they do.

makc, you might want to read "Wesley The Owl: A Remarkable 19 Year Love Story between a Girl And A Barn Owl" or "One Man's Owl" for a close look at life with an owl (if you're interested; if not, ignore!). The first is an easier (less dense) read, the second denser (in writing style), but also very good.

A bit unrelated, but here it goes: (thank you, internet, for ignoring copyrights)

owlice wrote:The owl, a symbol of Athena, was used on possibly the most successful coinage in the history of man, the tetradrachma of Athens, used (going off memory here, so dates are approximate) from about 580 BC to ... 36 BC or thereabouts, IIRC. (Picture here.) Today, the Greek one Euro coin uses the owl almost exactly as it appears there; I think the owl there is very cute! (ETA: Greek Euro coin image)

http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 23&t=16833

makc, very cool parrots! Bet one of those around the house would keep the cats in line!

Owls are great. But my latest fancy has been frogmouths. I don't know what it is about them but I like looking at them. And when they sleep during the day they pretend they are an appendage of whatever they are attached to.

There were Great Horned owls living in the woods behind the house I grew up in. You could hear them hooting back and forth at night. Always very cool to hear!

My dad once told me that he heard a lot of commotion in the back yard one day. He went to investigate; he found a red-tailed hawk fighting with one of the owls. In the end the owl drove the hawk away.

geckzilla, frogmouths are pretty doggone cute!!!

Orca, wow. I wonder why a hawk and owl would duke it out?!

No owls today, but I did see cormorants -- quite a few of them, which is unusual -- on my bike ride today. Also something I couldn't immediately identify, so I need to get out the Sibley to see what it was. Hawk-sized, very cool, and man, was I wishing I had binoculars with me!

owlice wrote: 1. Orca, wow. I wonder why a hawk and owl would duke it out?!

2. Also something I couldn't immediately identify, so I need to get out the Sibley to see what it was. Hawk-sized, very cool, and man, was I wishing I had binoculars with me!

1. Probably over territory, I'd imagine. You see red-tails all over the place around here. Might have been a chance encounter though. Can you imagine - quite a rude awakening for an owl to find a hawk in his face!

2 Osprey? We have a lot of those too, near water sources anyway. The Columbia River and the Coast, not to mention lakes and smaller rivers.

Eagle's nest live webcam:
http://joshsteinland.com/c_NewBaldEaglesNestCam.php

humming birds webcam:
http://wonderfl.net/code/b00b6f1e1ff10a ... 6f1439f155

Orca, thanks! Interesting about the owl and hawk. I hope your dad moved your pet mice into the house after that.

I don't recall ever seeing osprey in that area before, which may mean exactly nothing, of course! When I first saw it, I thought it was a Black-backed Gull, and once I got off the bike so I could watch him without landing in the river, he of course decided to fly away from rather than toward me. SO annoying, that! I saw another, too, which did come close enough for me to see that he has some sort of face mask (made me think of a Peregrine, though this was bigger than one). Ospreys hover -- I've not seen them do so, but Sibley says they do -- and this did hover, though over land, not water. Hovering was for four to five wingbeats. I've seen falcons hover; that's the only large bird I've seen do it. So maybe an osprey; that could account for the behavior and the facial mask. I'll have to take the little specs with me the next time I ride that trail!

RJN wrote:Eagle's nest live webcam:
http://joshsteinland.com/c_NewBaldEaglesNestCam.php

makc wrote:humming birds webcam:
http://wonderfl.net/code/b00b6f1e1ff10a ... 6f1439f155

I may never get another thing done in my entire life...! (Thank you!)

Speaking of Bald Eagles, I see one often when I bike on Hain's Point in DC. There's a particular tree he likes to sit in which gives me a great view of him.

And speaking of hawks (we were, weren't we? ), here's a picture of a leucistic Red-tailed Hawk my then-10-year-old took when we were at the Carolina Raptor Center.
This is not an albino; this bird's feathers were normal, and as she lost the ability to produce the melanin necessary for coloration, her normally-colored feathers were gradually replaced with white feathers.

I was at a friend's house for an early dinner and games some weeks ago, and a bird in her yard caught my attention because I'd never seen one like it before. (Well, all the birds caught my attention, but this one *really* caught it!) It acted like a junco, but it certainly didn't look like one! We finally reached consensus in the group that yeah, it really was a junco, but it was pied -- some of its feathers had been replaced with white ones. Eventually, it may end up all white.

I have some pictures of birds of prey monks keep in cages that I took when we visited some monastery nearby, but you are not going to like them. They have their wings cut off and don't look too happy.

makc wrote:I have some pictures of birds of prey monks keep in cages that I took when we visited some monastery nearby,
but you are not going to like them. They have their wings cut off and don't look too happy.

Let us prey.

neufer wrote:Let us prey.

Hard to do without wings.

From my birding buddy, links to more nest cams:

Blue tit, U.K. http://www.sportsmansparadiseonline.com ... _Nest.html
White storks, Spain http://www.sportsmansparadiseonline.com ... _Nest.html
Wood duck, USA http://www.sportsmansparadiseonline.com ... _Nest.html
Anna’s hummingbird, San Fran http://www.sportsmansparadiseonline.com ... _Cam2.html
Tawny owl, Northern Europe http://www.sportsmansparadiseonline.com/Owls_Nest.html

Saw a leucistic robin on the path in the park the other day and thought of you, owl.

Oh, very cool, geckzilla! I've seen only pics of leucistic robins; have never seen one with mine own eyes. Someday, someday!