Having received Bob McGuire's kind tip during a fortuitous street encounter not long before he posted here, I took my kids out to the East Ithaca Recreation Way to look for the screech-owl. At 4:35 PM, we found it exactly where Bob specified.
First the owl was sleeping low in the cavity, with eyes barely above the lip of the hole. Then the owl turned sideways and tilted its head back, still sleeping. It looked uncannily like a person snoozing in the front passenger seat of a car. Finally, as we gathered ourselves to leave, the owl woke up and perched in full frontal view. For a couple of minutes its eyes conveyed a strange inexpressive frozen glare, but then it began turning its head and looking around, maybe watching dogs cavorting up the path. This was the first red-morph owl I've ever seen in New York, the first ever for my kids anywhere, and the last bird we identified in 2012. What a wonderful bird! Thanks, Bob! Mark Chao -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
