In the past few weeks, I’ve seen barred owls twice in very unexpected places. The first was in our yard itself. The second was in a downtown area in Bellows Falls, VT.
Owls are not generally friendly with people. They avoid us, and with good reason. Most owls are nocturnal and have the advantage of silent flight for hunting down prey. The Barred Owl is no exception. Our yard is mostly away from people, though it is near a road, and we do see these magnificent birds in our area from time to time.
But the other owl? It was sitting on a post on a public street in Bellows Falls, VT.
Then it flew across the street to the pine trees lining the street outside a Rite-Aid Parking Lot.
There were two specific events in common before both these sightings.
This, by the way, is the one that hung out in our yard all day:
Generally speaking, when you see a bird out of its expected area, there’s a reason. It might not have enough food and is therefore required to expand its range to a more unusual location.
But sometimes there’s something else at play. In both these cases, there was an ice storm the night before. My theory is that these owls had roosting spots they preferred, but the ice drove them down. For an owl to perch on a post in a populated area as this one did…
…suggests that it was either ill, injured or just needed a break. The bird could fly. I wish I’d had a picture, but it was too fast– it flew very gracefully directly across the street. I’ve seen owls fly up close before. It’s pretty incredible. And then it just settled down in the tree.
I think the answer here is simple– the bird may be slightly malnourished– it’s been a very tough winter, but no one’s seeing these birds routinely– they only seem to show up after ice storms, which implies that they just get fed up with trying to hunt for the night, and just give up, find the first convenient spot they can and take a break.
I might be wrong about this. Owls sometimes get sick. They die. Both these owls, I think, are juveniles. Not all juveniles survive the winter and we’ve had a particularly harsh one, and seeing a dead owl is kind of heartbreaking.
So you do what you can. You leave the owl be, let it get its rest, and hope it has a better night the next time. When you take pictures, you make it brief and at a safe distance.
And then you let it go, and just hope.
This has been an unusually tough winter by any standards. I noticed, for a time that my feeders weren’t going down, and the peanuts were just sitting untouched on the snow. It might have been the hawk I had seen sitting next to our parlor window a few days earlier; but I couldn’t help thinking the cold might have taken its toll. Things are more or less back to normal now, but last night’s big dump has to be a challenge to ground-feeders.
About a month ago I saw a barred owl swoop down on something in my back yard in broad daylight. A minute later it perched on a dead branch for a minute and I got a couple of photos. Others around Middlesex have seen barred owls around in the daytime. Sadly, one was dead by the road. Another was preying on somebody’s chickens.
I read somewhere that barred owls have territories between 200 and 900 acres. That’s a lot of real estate. Perhaps what we are seeing is a population bump and some owls being driven out of their prime real estate and usual hunting patterns.
I have to note that the mouse population around my house essentially disappeared over this winter. Go owls!