Fully focused

This beautiful Great Gray Owl was amazing to watch, as it listened and watched for a Meadow Vole below the snow. Even when there might be several people standing watching the owl, it is completely focused, other than just an occasional glance in our direction. These owls are quite tolerant, for the most part, of people. Though it looks like it was very close and more or less at eye level, it was actually high in a tree. Normally, we don't get Great Gray Owls in Calgary - I think the last one was seen about 17 years ago, but this winter, we have seen two of them, one at Griffith Woods and the one in my photo, seen at Bebo Grove in Fish Creek Park. How very lucky we have been! The angle of the owl in my photo is not my favourite, but it does show the beautiful feather pattern on the back of the head and the rather flat facial disk.

A friend sent me the following information that she had received from Gus Yaki, a well-known Naturalist in the city, after asking him about the first of these two owls, seen at Griffith Woods. When asked about the possibility of the food supply having run out, he did not think the owl was feeding well because it was hunting during mid-day. It should have been hunting at dawn and dusk and sleeping during the day. He said they have excellent hearing. Also, he said he has not seen many small mammal tracks at this location and apparently the Meadow Voles have to surface to allow carbon dioxide to exit from their tunnels. He also said the owls see in ultraviolet which causes mouse urine to shine so they would see that.

"These birds wait, listen, and watch for prey, then swoop down; they also may fly low through open areas in search of prey. Their large facial disks, also known as "ruffs", focus sound, and the asymmetrical placement of their ears assists them in locating prey, because of the lack of light during the late and early hours in which they hunt. On the nesting grounds, they mainly hunt at night and near dawn and dusk; at other times, they are active mostly during the night.

They have excellent hearing, and may locate (and then capture) prey moving beneath 60 cm (2.0 ft) of snow in a series of tunnels solely with that sense. They then can crash to a snow depth roughly equal to their own body size to grab their prey. Only this species and, more infrequently, other fairly large owls from the Strix genus are known to "snow-plunge" for prey, a habit that is thought to require superb hearing not possessed by all types of owls." From Wikipedia.

The first link shows a cross-section of a Great Gray Owl, showing the small size of the skeleton compared to the bulk of the plumage:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Strix_n...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grey_Owl

flic.kr/p/mqChxD