BARN OWL

Опис:

One night years ago I went for a winter midnight walk down to the creek near my parents house. I liked to go down there at night just to see what critters I might stir up,deer,maybe a fox. As I was heading down the trail,almost there, I heard this blood curdling screech right above me,scared the crap outa me,then I heard it again a few minutes later more distant and again some minutes after that more distant still. It didn't take me long to figure out it was a Barn Owl soaring in the dark hunting,and that was their eerie call which I had read about. I never did see that bird that night in the blackness, but that was my first encounter with a Barn Owl,and a memorable one at that. A year or so after that I was walking down trough the marshes of the Great Salt Lake on a winters day after a fresh snow of a few inches, and low and behold in a little bush on the side of a ditch was a Barn Owl perched out in the open in broad daylight. It let me get very close before it flushed and flew off,but landed in another tree not to distant. That was my first sighting. Since then I've come to observe they are quite common at low elevations around here,even in town,but are just good at not being seen. But they are particularly common around the wetlands of the Great Salt Lake, and for what ever reason when there is snow on the ground,they can be seen hunting and perching out in the open in broad daylight, but during the rest of the year you have to either know of a roost,or happen to catch a glimpse of them at dusk, or settle for hearing that screech in the blackness and know they are there. I imagine the snow makes hunting harder for them,more places for rodents to hide and muffled sounds,so they just have to spend more time out hunting to feed them selves, either starve and die otherwise I guess.