I hope nobody wants to talk photography today… ;-) This heavily cropped photo is just here to show you the little owlet, that I had the pleasure to see face to face this week for the first time. We had a couple windy days and most of the time the young Great Horned Owl stays low in the nest and only the upper part of its head is visible. It looks like the parents feed it well, at least they are not much at the nest. I have seen the mother flying over into the reeds along the river a couple times. With other words, their food source is really not far from the nest.
HIGH UP IN THE TREES (TWO STORIES)
After an overall gray day the sun came out this evening for a brief moment. Luckily this happened when I checked the nest of the Great Horned Owl again today. Not much new to report. I saw the upper part of the head of one little owlet, but haven’t seen the face yet. My photography friend Linda from Dubuque sent me an email today, basically confirming the same observations. It looks like we have one young owl in the nest again, the same as during the last couple years. But what do we know? Since we can’t peek into the nest we may still have a surprise waiting for us...
Male Wood Duck
The second image was shot this morning during some light rain from my office window and has not much to do with decent photography. I made it mainly more for my own documentary. Every spring, and only in spring, we see and hear migrating Wood Ducks resting in the oak and hickory trees that surround us here on the bluffs above the Little Maquoketa River Valley. There was actually a female duck sitting not far from this male, but as you can see by the blurry parts in the foreground, lots of branches obstructed a clear view. The bird is further away as it seems. I have cropped the picture a little bit. Nothing for the purists among you today, but since my blog has always been about both, photography and nature, I still like to share today’s observations with you...
I THINK I SAW AN OWLET...
Very warm temperatures (26˚C / 79˚F) today made for a pleasant evening. Down at the Mississippi River big ice floes drifted by. I saw an eagle using an ice floe for a ride downstream. The entry channel of the little marina at Mud Lake had still an ice cover and a few ice fishermen were still sitting on their buckets and tried to catch some fish. It was quiet and peaceful…
But this is not why I post here today. As always, I checked the nest of the Great Horned Owl from a distance. Mother owl seemed to sit higher in the nest today. At least in some of the images I saw much more of the body than usually. It wasn’t before I viewed the photos on screen at home that I realized that I had probably captured the first pictures of an owlet! A little fuzzy ball appears in some of the photos and I believe this is the head of the little owl. I cropped the photo “to death” so I can share my discovery better with you. We knew it was about time and I’m happy that I caught a glimpse…