We've been watching several (3) Great Horned Owl nests that are located in and around Rocky. The owlets are in various stages of maturity. It seems as if the nest by the library contains the youngest owlets, the nest near Cascade Cottages, just inside the Fall River Entrance to the Park is next, and the owlets at the Alluvial Fan (on the way to Old Fall River Road) look to contain the oldest babies. The owlet at the top of the blog is from the Alluvial Fan nest. These birds are truly amazing. The nests are huge, trashy looking things. Underneath, one can find owl pellets (right! owl poop) that contain the bones and skeletons of the small rodents that are fed to the young owlets. Often when we see the babies, they have blood on their faces having just finished some juicy thing that they have been fed. Both the male and female owl are involved in rearing the young. Generally, owls are mated for life but after the owlets are fully on their own, the mom and dad go their separate ways in their territory as they are solitary birds. Although we don't often see the dads, they are the ones who hunt and bring food to both the mom and the kids. The owlets at the Alluvial Fan are doing what our friend Lyn says is "branching." Getting out of the nest, walking along the branches, climbing back into the nest, coming out again to explore what it's like to have these great huge wings that spread, and flap, and tangle in the tree. The owlet at the top has wings with "big boy" feathers, and head and body that still display the baby fuzz (which I call Muppet fuzz).
Saturday morning I went on a bird walk with friends. We visited the owls, but also saw some other interesting birds as we prowled around the Alluvial Fan. We looked up and saw a Red Tailed Hawk circling on the thermals. Our birding guide put binoculars to his eyes and called out, "That hawk has a squirrel." Sure enough when we looked, the silhouette shape of a small squirrel, head down, tail hanging was visible in the talons of the hawk. I've included some of these pictures in the set linked to this blog. The pics are fuzzy, but I figured they were worth posting because one doesn't often see raptors with prey. You can access the set of pictures called "Morning Wings" by clicking on the link below.
Lucy and I continue to muddle through out here in the mountains without Pam. We hope that she can join us soon. We've had every kind of weather we could imagine in a week: clear, warm day, cold with snow...the snow so hard above 10,000 feet that Trail Ridge Road was closed for two days, partially cloudy, a day where smoke from an 82,000 acre fire in New Mexico blew in and shrouded the front range, and then huge winds to carry the smoke out. Today, Sunday dawned crystal clear with blues skies but now, by afternoon it has clouded over and is very windy.
And so it goes here in our Little Valley home in Colorado.
