May Lotito wrote:Great detective work! Are the horizontal lines in the lower part from the owl's tail?
Good detective work yourself.
He/she has to come almost to a full stop from a fast, quiet dive. Means the owl needs all feather surface area for an airbrake, then as much lift as the wings can generate.
I've seen another photo elsewhere of a much larger owl that snatched what was a rabbit. Same pattern/flight evolution.
Regards furry vermin. We trough feed our 5 LGDs during the winter or when we travel. Put a game camera up to make sure everybody was getting a chance to feed. What we saw was vermin and a fox feeding as well at night. Not unexpected.
What we also saw was a small, smart owl perched on the feeder roof, waiting for mice.
We love our raptors and have a lot of them. Eagles, osprey, barred, horned and saw whet owls, Northern Harriers and the occasional Red Tail. We also have barn cats, a necessity, five of them. Also have had a predation problem last couple years with owls, eagles, probably foxes/'yotes.
Little Mr. Wilson, a grey tabby, now departed, showed up two years ago with a couple big tears in his hide that matched owl talons, that he just dodged or got dropped by , whatever, survived that. Also have him on our game camera in full cheetah sprint across the driveway dodging a hawk doing a very hard left banking dive.
We had a family of eagles here. Hanging out just up the lake. Mom, dad, and junior, a second year juvenile last summer. Saw an eagle down the shore in the front yard do a quick 180 back last April, then drop straight down, talons out. "What's this?", I think, walking towards the lake.
An eagle can 'jump' about 10ft straight up, with a big wing flap or two. I've spooked one up into the branches of a tree, they levitate, I swear.
He dropped, or missed, fat black Kenny the cat, who was about four feet up in the air his own self at that point, jumping or flying.
Kenny disappeared, injured or maybe just terrified. Neither of them was waiting for us when we got back.
Eagles were relentless last summer, back and forth on the shoreline, fishing as well as bullying the osprey. We had five at least I could identify, three adults, two juveniles. But I think the word is out, cats a la carte, at El Rancho de Chango y Lil'B on the lake.
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