Dark-eyed beauty

My spirits were lifted three days ago, with this sighting of a beautiful Barred Owl. I've barely been out looking for Snowy Owls and Short-eared Owls this winter and have only seen a few very distant birds - at least until the day before yesterday, 25 January 2017, when I was lucky enough to see 11 Snowy Owls outside the city. I've also missed a recent Long-eared Owl, a Northern Saw-whet Owl and a Northern Hawk Owl.

This was only the second 100% wild Barred Owl I’d ever seen. I had seen a family of them near Edmonton, when we went to see ones that had been banded. They were wild birds, but I still hoped to one day see a completely wild one (no nesting box). Yesterday’s owl was beautiful – crummy light, but I was so happy to see this owl. We very rarely see this species of owl within the city, so it was a real treat. Took a long walk before seeing it, and I've been in agony ever since.

"The Barred Owl’s hooting call, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” is a classic sound of old forests and treed swamps. But this attractive owl, with soulful brown eyes and brown-and-white-striped plumage, can also pass completely unnoticed as it flies noiselessly through the dense canopy or snoozes on a tree limb. Originally a bird of the east, during the twentieth century it spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward into California." From AllAboutBirds.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/id

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_owl