Owl Moments

This photo of a young Snowy Owl was taken a number of years ago near Eagle Creek west of Delisle. Apparently you can tell the age of a Snowy by the amount of dark barring. The older the owl, the whiter it is and while females retain some dark spots and barring as they age, old males can be almost snowy white. We haven't noticed any of these winter "ghosts" around yet this year.

Last winter we stopped to watch an almost pure white owl on top of a power pole adjacent to the highway. The light was such that his yellow eyes almost seemed to be glowing. Unfortunately,we didn't have the camera with us. He was there when we went to Humboldt and still there when we came back.  When Mom was in the nursing home in Wakaw, Snowy Owls seemed to be perched on the same power poles week after week when we went to visit her.

This talk of owls reminds me of my most embarrassing bird watching moment of the year. We were coming home after picking up our dog from her grooming session at G...'s Trucking west of Spalding (doesn't everyone take their dog to the truck depot for grooming?) and out the corner of my eye, I spotted what I thought was an owl on a fence post quite some distance from the road. John stopped when I screamed and we both got out to look. He thought it was an old rubber boot upended on the post. I, on the other hand, swore I saw ear tufts and proclaimed it to be a Great Horned Owl. We had no binoculars with us so we couldn't settle the argument.

Next morning I convinced John we should go back over to check if the Great Horned Owl was still around in the same spot. And it was! John was still muttering "rubber boot" but he drove off the grid onto a side road to get a better look. Definitely ear tufts. Definitely a Great Horned Owl. Not. It was one of those plastic owls designed to scare other birds away, perhaps mounted there because the farmer had trout in his dugout.

As I say, it was not one of my finer bird watching moments.