Great Horned Owl

Young Great Horned Owl on Lamp Post

(Click on photo to view full size.)

The parents of the two young Great Horned Owls (see "Great Horned Owlets") have made themselves scarce, but the young ones are around most evenings.  This one was sitting on a lamp post in the front yard.  He (or she?) was looking in the other direction when I arrived and looked startled at first to see me, but seemed content for us to watch each other. 

Owl Peering

Barred Owl Peering

(Click photo to view full-size.)

The big barred owl outside the window was watching me from behind a veil of yellow raintree leaves. Be sure to view the full size photo to see the shine in his eyes.

Great Horned Owlets

This is one of the Great Horned Owlets that we have been watching grow up, ever since one of them fell out of the nest and we had a dramatic owl rescue.

We have learned that crows habitually harass owls, so one way of locating the owls is to listen for the crows.  Here is one of the young owls, older now and able to fly, high in a tree, staring at me and ignoring the crow.  We were told that it is very unusual for the owl and the crow to sit together companionably like this.

Please click on these photos to view them larger — and notice the owlet's big yellow eyes.  I have read that if Great Horned Owls were as large as human beings, their eyes would be the size of oranges.  (See the Nature Conservancy.)

The same young owl, this time with the full moon.

Owls mostly do not get good press in the Bible, but here is a passage from Isaiah portraying the owls as honoring God:

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me,
    the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
    the people I formed for myself
    that they may proclaim my praise.

(Isaiah 43:19-21)