Visitors

Early one morning a couple of weeks ago, Jeff and his sons were working on the roof and an owl landed in the tree right next to the house. The next morning the same thing happened. Gary and I went up to the property at dusk just to see if it was around and there it was in the tree- a barred owl. Then another one. We stayed for about an hour and watched two owls hunting all around the house coming very close to us. We did this for a few evenings. One night about 7 PM we went up to see them and what do you know? They had two babies with them! They were feeding them and teaching them how to hunt all right in front of us. One of the babies was curious and landed on scaffolding next to us and stayed there for about 5 minutes. The babies would emit a high pitched shriek and a parent would come and feed it then the baby would land in the grass and fly off with something he caught. This went on for five evenings and then they were gone. I'm guessing they have to teach them how to hunt in daylight and then they are on their own as we haven't seen them since. It was fantastic to watch. Here are some of the photos we took of these remarkable birds.