{"id":6550,"date":"2012-10-21T10:15:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T17:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=6550"},"modified":"2012-10-22T10:20:22","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T17:20:22","slug":"quoth-the-bard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=6550","title":{"rendered":"Owl wins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding: 2px 2px 4px 6px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-left: 8px; width: 340px; float: right; clear: left; color: #555555; background-color: #eeeeee; border: #dddddd 2px solid;\"><strong>Joke&#8217;s on me<\/strong>\u00a0When I posted these pictures of the owl and raven, I thought the\u00a0protagonist was a Barred Owl (and made a play on the words barred and bard). I was wrong. Two competent birders assure me that the pictures show a Short-eared Owl, a bird both smaller and rarer than the Barred. I have revised the page (and title).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, we watched angry birds.<\/p>\n<p>It started when a Common Raven swooped and dived upon some unseen object among the hummocks in a meadow. It was not possible to tell what attracted the raven&#8217;s attention until suddenly a Short-eared Owl burst from the grass, a typical habitat for this species.<\/p>\n<p>Why the raven cared about the owl is unclear, but ravens do make a practice of attacking birds of prey.<\/p>\n<p>Once the owl was\u00a0airborne, the raven chased it\u00a0mercilessly, but soon&#8230;, well, the pictures tell the story.<\/p>\n<p>The Short-eared Owl took to the air.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6553\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/barredowl121020bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Common Raven gave chase.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6561\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/ravenowl121021aDK.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Deftly, the owl circled and\u00a0attacked\u00a0from above.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6560\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/ravenowl121021bDK.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The owl now chased the raven.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6562\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/ravenowl121021cDK.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Although half the weight of the raven, the Short-eared Owl was the victor.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6554\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/barredowl121020as.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">Derek Kite took the three pictures which show both birds (his were better than mine). He has given me permission to use them here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joke&#8217;s on me\u00a0When I posted these pictures of the owl and raven, I thought the\u00a0protagonist was a Barred Owl (and made a play on the words barred and bard). I was wrong. Two competent birders assure me that the pictures &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=6550\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6550"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6568,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550\/revisions\/6568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}