The SNOWY OWL which I found this afternoon in Union Springs was sitting on lake ice eating a catfish. The bird was facing away from me, so I can't compare directly with the lake-ice bird at Stewart Park yesterday which faced me, but it also appeared pretty dark - heavily barred, including several bars on the tail and a hood over the crown and sides of the head. The only all-white areas I saw were the face and some underside feathers that showed on either side of the tail. In an effort to make a better eBird list I looked around at other birds, and during that time the owl disappeared, fish and all. Moral: bring a birding buddy. There was another raptor on the ice farther north, a female NORTHERN HARRIER feeding on something large, while several immature GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULLS waited patiently. I was surprised that the harrier was that intimidating (there wasn't any direct interaction that I saw), because it didn't seem very substantial, and Sibley says a Great Black-backed Gull weighs 4 times what a Northern Harrier weighs.
--Dave Nutter
On Jan 19, 2014, at 02:12 PM, [email protected] wrote:
SNOWY OWL on ice edge, Frontenac Park, Union Springs.
--Dave Nutter
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