Great Grey Owl: This is the second posting on a planned sequence of five postings on this largest owl.
The Great Grey Owl visits briefly beside the North Arm of the Lake during many a winter. It comes to hunt voles in a field.
It spends a fair bit of time perching somewhere, just looking around and listening for those voles. While perched for a large amount of time, one just sees the back of its head as it looks the other way. However, these pictures are biased towards seeing the eyes. It also looks and listens as it hunts on the wing. Presumably, after running low on voles in that field, it just moves on.
This owl owes a great deal of its success to its enormous facial disc, the largest disc of any owl. Its considerable size separates the ears and significantly helps it position things it hears in the horizontal. But, it doesn’t stop there. It has one ear higher than the other, which enables it to pinpoint sound in the vertical as well. This is added to super sensitive hearing which may even enable it to hear the heart beat of a vole beneath a foot of snow. But, while the owl can hear the vole, its own flight is virtually silent, so a vole does not hear it coming until it is too late.
A power line runs down one side of the field. Much time was spent searching from it.
The owl looks in all directions, but most of the pictures taken show its face, not its back.
As it moves about, pilings also served as a searching position. Photo by Cynthia.
Only once did it perch and search from a tree.
But while there, it fluffed its feathers. Photo by Cynthia
Beautiful! Great photos.
Wonderful photos. Amazing how many Great Grays have shown up in the Koots this winter.
Paul, we only saw one, but others saw two.
Thanks for the pics which I didn’t get!
The one Dirk caught the last season of his life in 2014 thrilled him so!
These shots and notes are special…and..gee..more to come..
Allan / Woodbury Village