Over the past two days I’ve taken two people owling … my friend, Jeff and my son, Erik. Even though the weather has been sunny, cold with a bit of wind which is generally not good for owling, the Great Gray Owls came through in flying colors. However, when it comes to Snowy Owls I am becoming frustrated. I have seen the beautiful male snowy both of the last two days, including this morning, but always from a great distance. Oh well …
I also may have found the nesting site for my local Great Horned Owls. The number of post sundown hikes in the dark which I have taken recently is amazing. If I’m wrong I will have to wait for the crows to fill me in on the proper location when the owlets start to move about the nesting tree. Last year the 1st egg was laid on February 8th.
Erik’s morning owl
Hi Richard,
Obviously you do not want your readers to know where you are sighting owls as you never mention locations. However, to give your readers the joy of finding and sighting owls themselves, how about posting some hints of finding owls such as:
time of day
calm or windy day
sunshine or cloudy
habitat such as type of trees or ground
forest or open field
some good general locations such as the bay, Sacs Zim, freeway to Two Harbors, Gensen,
etc.
when and how to hear owls calling
common species of owls in our area
normal prey
Please keep up your very informative and delightful posts which are so interesting to children
and adults alike.
Have you written any articles for the MN Conservation Volunteer which I have missed?
Hi Henry: Great comment and questions. I on occasion reveal owl locations, but I need to be careful. These birds can get “loved to death” In fact, Cornell’s eBird does not publish location data on either Great Gray Owls and Northern Hawk Owls for the very same reason. However, just two weeks ago I published an extensive, educational post about Snowy Owls (complete with location information). Here is the link to that post. I will answer your owling habitat questions for Great Gray Owls in a future post. Finally while I have not written for MN Conservation Volunteer, I have written birding articles for Lake Country Journal, taken the Duluth News Tribune outdoors writer birding several times for articles featured across the Northland (syndicated), and presented for my local Audubon chapter.