Wonderful post Steve. I agree it is quite hard to come to good conclusions after a short time. My Thanksgiving trip up north (hopefully just 1 of many I plan to make over the coming months) had many of the same features as your described trip. I exclusively stayed in my car to shoot however, just as a personal preference and in deference to the owls. I did notice distinct personalities, but in most all cases, almost every Owl I saw seemed indifferent if not oblivious to me, especially after I parked/turned the car off. Generally I'd get a passing glance, and often times the owl would be hunting/looking down or around and not even facing me. So i'd just patiently observe this wonderful creature until it happened to glance around in my direction. Often times I had owls fly right over my vehicle, or fly closer to me even. Once while observing one owl, a second one flew in on the opposite side of the road and perched on a small spruce tree that was close by. It was just amazing to watch these creatures. Most of the owls I saw weren't actually hunting, but rather napping or just looking around. I observed a few hunting, but no successes that I could notice. Those hunting I tended to leave rather quickly so as to not disturb them, and I didn't stay with any owl at all that I observed past 4pm or so, as it was getting dark and I knew that most every Great Grey at that time was definitely hunting so I just waypointed the locations of these birds in my navigation system as I passed by.
The first Owl I saw early in the morning along Hwy53 going up towards Cotton was actually sitting in the ditch on the ground. It startled me at first because I wasn't expecting to pass a Great Grey Owl while driving along 53, and certainly not see one sitting in the grasses. It must have just dove after a vole/mouse before I drove past. I certainly look forward to more encounters and more trips up north. Cheers, Chris Fagyal Senior Software Engineer United Defense, L.P. ASD Fridley, MN (763) 572-5320 [email protected] >>> Steve Foss <[email protected]> 11/28/2004 19:27:17 PM >>> After spending two days over the Thanksgiving holiday observing and shooting (with the camera, of course) great gray and northern hawk owls in the Lake County and Sax/Zim area and points south, it seems clear that individual birds respond differently to similar stimuli. While I did much of my shooting from inside the vehicle (as close to owls as 10 feet away), I also went out on foot several times. Some owls took off as soon as the vehicle slowed. Some of those flew to perches a short distance away and continued to hunt with intensity, but others kept on going out of sight. And some stayed put. Perhaps that's related to the amount of stress each individual bird is under, but perhaps not. Forming conclusions after so few hours of study is a dicey business. Some birds didn't seem at all bothered that I was near, and they hunted with what seemed to be no distraction. Those birds I felt comfortable staying with for as long as 20 minutes each. There were nine of those, and each of them scored on mice/voles while I was watching. In some cases, I was sitting on the sloping ditch outside the vehicle and fairly close to the birds. I did notice that owls with fresh catches tended to fly away immediately and out of sight of the vehicle. To be close to these owls has been my great pleasure. To assess each situation as it comes, to weigh one's impression of whether being in proximity to the individual bird is adding to its stress, to care more for the bird than for the photo and withdraw at signs of agitation these are lessons in humility. See you out there, and good owling, Steve __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do? http://my.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ mou-net mailing list [email protected] http://cbs.umn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mou-net
