While we were out paddling on Saturday we heard the cries of immature owls. We did a little squeaking and soon had three young barred owls and their mom peering down at us. (Strix varia)We often hear barred owls calling in the day time out in the swamp. Their "usual" call sounds like Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all? But they also have what we term the monkey call and a rather hair-raising scream. When several of them get together and start having a conversation it can get pretty loud.
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5 comments:
My favorite owl! Well, maybe not my favorite but since it's the one I see most often and also hear a lot it falls by default to my favorite.
Very nice picture, Swampy, and you're right about what I call the "insane cackle" sometimes tacked to the end of the more commonly heard "who cooks for you".
It took awhile but I was able to locate a .wav of that crazy cackling sound here.
We have a family of these that raise a chick in our yard each summer, but they haven't shown yet. They are a lot of fun to have around.
You see, FC and I agree - barred owls are a lot of fun, and so it must be true. And since they don't do much in the way of migration, and continue to call in various ways even in the winter, they're there to entertain you all year around.
I do love great horned owls and have a special spot in my heart for screech owls. Unfortunately, the presence of barred owls, which prey on screech owls, means the latter aren't very common here and that we can figure that the great horned owls, which will predate on barred owls, aren't common here either.
Although I have hear, called, and thereby seen great horned owls.
Excellent pic.
The beaver story is great too--wish you had more room on your memory card too! Maybe you should invest in a spare?? :-)
Just got back from camping ourselves . . . met quite a few critters ourselves. Namely a racoon who wanted a can of rasins over the apples and bananas we had accidently left out!
FC, we usually have a great horned owl to nest just behind our house - their babies make a lot of noise.
Wayne, we have a generous helping of all three owl species. One year we found a great horned owl's nest out on the millpond inside an old cypress stump. We got close up views of the nest and the chicks -- and of mom when she flew in to run us off.
SQMojo, I am envious! You got to go camping - I haven't had a chance to go camping in quite some time.
And yes, I do need a spare memory card. That very subject came up as I was cussing, uh, lamenting the full state of my card at such an inopportune time.
Raccoons are a sneaky lot -- I had one steal grapes out of my kayak one day.
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