Now, the big adventure begins

From the archives! I took lots of photos of this priceless Northern Hawk Owlet and other owls the year before last (2012), but still haven't really gone through my images thoroughly. It became a bit too overwhelming to go through them all, especially as there were many similar ones, and they tended to be left. So, the occasional one from 2012 is still popping up now and again on my photostream. This was the first day out of the nest for this little Northern Hawk Owlet : ) Taken on 28 May 2012, NW of Cochrane. There was no sign of this little family last year. Hope the youngster is still doing fine. They gave us so many wonderful chances to watch their family grow, helped by the fact that this owl species hunts during the day. How privileged we were to witness all this!

A couple of interesting facts : -

"The type of prey the Hawk-Owl catches will determine its eating strategy. For mammalian prey the ritual is generally the same: the Northern Hawk-Owl will eviscerate its prey, eats the head first (especially for prey like the red squirrel, whose head is fairly large), and then—when tackling larger prey—it will eat the organs and cache the remains; with smaller prey, the owl will simply swallow the body whole."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Hawk-Owl

"The Northern Hawk Owl can detect prey by sight at a distance of up to 800 meters (half a mile). Though it is thought to detect prey primarily by sight, the Northern Hawk Owl can find and seize prey under 30 cm (1 foot) of snow." From AllAboutBirds.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/northern_hawk_owl/lifehistory