This handsome fellow paid us a visit on Valentine’s Day yesterday, but it wasn’t an act of love. He’s a barred owl, our only black-eyed owl. Owls his size (up to about two feet long) and smaller ones struggle to hunt in crusty/icy snow of the type that still blankets most of the land here.
This shy raptor apparently has been forced to take risks by not only hunting during the day, but by hunting in a garden near our house in bright sunlight where his movements caught Barbara’s eye as she glanced through a window. (“Dick, you’ll want to see this!”)
He looked thin and his impatient flitting from perch to perch indicated that he might have been desperately hungry. (Most owls that I’ve known sit Buddha-like on their perch during the day, only slowly moving their heads. They see more people than people see them.)
Barred owls can hear voles and other small mammals in their frozen tunnels up to two feet under light snow. However, a thick crust of ice or excessive snow depth apparently makes capturing their prey virtually impossible.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 14, 2024; sex assumed.)