Northern Pygmy Owl Bookmark

[mrt]

Happy solstice season. Attached is a picture of a Northern Pygmy Owl from yesterday. My wife and I are enthusiastic birders living in Southern Oregon. She's the chief IDer. I try to record for posterity. I maintain a website to keep track of as many cooperative birds from our trips as possible, this year mainly from within a tank of gas of home. We have a camper on our pickup so we can socially distance and still go out with some frequency. This year's website collections are of locations ranging from the coast of California and Oregon as far east as central Oregon. Other years we venture further afield. While we saw over 200 species this year I was able to capture about 170 of those species. Birders interested in these Oregon/California locations might find the collections useful in IDing birds and seeing the possibilities. Last week for example, we had the privilege of spending an hour in a meadow with two hunting Great Gray Owls. I posted an extensive collection from that experience. The website is at mrtk.smugmug.com

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[Icarus]

Beautiful! What a fierce little bird.

 

[mrt]

Thanks Icarus. A friend saw another Pygmy Owl a couple days ago ripping up a pine siskin - feathers flying everywhere

 

[Yezdi]

Lovely...he sure looks very angry..

 

[mrt]

Thanks Yezdi. Hopefully he wasn't angry at me. I think it's his nature.

 

[Irap]

Nice, Very interesting composition mrt.

 

[mrt]

Thanks for your kind thoughts Irap

 

[Venkatesh VT]

Superb shot

 

[mrt]

Thank you Venkatesh VT. I appreciate the thought.

 

[gordon_g]

Very nicely Done! Great Shot.. Don't you just wish they could talk sometimes...

 

[mrt]

They speak volumes when they look you in the eye. Thanks for the comment Gordon.

 

[Karl]

Marty, great pics of the GGOW! I agree, when they give you that look, I call it aloof, they are magic. For being a "sensitive" species they seem very unconcerned with humans, at least compared to most birds.

 

[mrt]

Thanks for your comment. Great grays are certainly unusual in their tolerance for people. Terry and I go out once or twice a week to search in their usual haunts. We see them maybe every third or fourth time out. When we do we sometimes have the opportunity to chase them around because we’re on public lands. Mostly they may only fly a short distance and sit and either ignore us or givenan occasional glance. The pictures on our a website took place over an hour. That was a record for their tolerance. Every once in a while they would look at me, but mostly they just did their thing.