News: Owls

[GCG]

I have absolutely no idea where this video was filmed, but it shows an owl delivering wedding rings to a groom. Source...MSN.com

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/watch/owl-incredibly-flies-down-the-aisle-to-deliver-wedding-rings-to-newlyweds/vi-BBYZHvS?ocid=ASUDHP

[GCG]

  Remember the owl in the Christmas tree? As I start my day after Christmas, I see the following video. Yes! another owl story.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/animals/owl-snatches-away-wrapper-from-cat-playing-with-it/vi-AAJASB0?ocid=sf LOL!

[irenekl]

Yikes!   Cool experience for this family but probably pretty awful for this owl. 

[The Peregrine Chick]

'Mama, that ornament scared me': Family finds owl hiding in Christmas tree
Leah Asmelash / CNN / 19 Dec 2019

A Georgia family got a special holiday surprise last week after finding an owl hiding inside their Christmas tree.  The discovery came last Thursday evening when Katie McBride Newman and her two children, India and Jack, were finishing dinner.

India, 10, had started to clear the table and was in another room when Newman heard her exclaim, "Oh my gosh!"

"She comes very dramatically into the dining room and goes, 'Mama, that ornament scared me,'" Newman told CNN. "Then she bursts into tears."

Newman said she's a big fan of owls, so the tree actually had about a dozen owl ornaments gracing its branches. At first, Newman said she thought India had just been spooked by one of those.

So Newman checked it out, ready to calm her daughter's fears. But when she peered into the tree for the ornament, she saw the owl turn its head and look straight at her.

"And I'm like, 'Oh, that's a real owl,'" Newman said. Meanwhile, India had disappeared into the other room, in tears again.
 
Owl may have been in their tree for over a week
 
The family had purchased the tree from a store about two days after Thanksgiving, so at first they thought the owl must have flown in and taken refuge inside their tree, Newman's husband, Billy, told CNN.

The family left their windows and doors open that night, hoping the bird would leave on its own -- but it didn't.

The next day, they called the Chattahoochee Nature Center, a non-profit environmental center about an hour away from their home in Newnan. An employee there told them to leave the owl some raw chicken, concerned it may not have eaten in a few days.

The employee stopped by Saturday morning. She caught the bird and identified it as an Eastern screech owl, common in the Georgia area, a spokesperson for the nature center, Jon Copsey, told CNN. She also checked for injuries and gave it some food and nutritional supplements.

The owl was pretty thin, igniting the theory that the bird must have been inside the tree since they bought it, Billy Newman said.

Returning the owl to the wild
 
The employee left the family some instructions: Leave the bird in a crate in a darkened room and release it after dark.

At dusk on Saturday, the family left the open crate outside. By 9:30 p.m., the owl had disappeared.
Copsey said the family did everything right in the situation -- closing it off from the rest of the house, trying to help it escape on its own and calling a wildlife rehabilitation professional.

Katie Newman, though, says she swears she can still hear the owl at night, hooting away.

Source: https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/lifestyle/2019/12/19/1_4736622.html
(Check out the photos!)

[dupre501]

And here is the previous article from June...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/burrowing-owl-love-1.4693561

[dupre501]

I liked this story!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/wild-burrowing-owl-eggs-hatch-1.4772902

[Jazzerkins]

It is obvious this beautiful bird has a very strong will to live.  May "he" live a long, healthy life, free to fly as intended.

[The Peregrine Chick]

This owl had an extraordinary survival story after a very bad day
By Karin Brulliard (Washington Post) reprinted in the Grand Forks Herald, May 8, 2018


Owl shortly after a driver found it trapped in the grille of his truck. Courtesy of PAWS.

A great horned owl can take down prey larger than itself: Skunks, wild turkeys, the occasional cat. Its sharp and powerful talons can crush its chosen dinner.  Among the few things that can take down a great horned owl are vehicles, which smack birds in the wrong place at the wrong time with a few tons of steel and highway-speed force. But no one told that to 2017-4242, the case number of one particularly resilient owl treated at a Seattle-area wildlife rehabilitation clinic this winter.

This bird survived being slammed by a Ford F-150 on a very chilly night. Then it survived being wedged in the truck's grille for nearly 300 miles.  Then it made it through a spraying and whizzing carwash -- all while still stuck in that grille.  It was, to say the least, a very bad, very harrowing experience. After all of that, more than two months of rehabilitation for a mangled wing must have seemed like no big deal.  "Oh, he stood out," said Jennifer Convy, director of the PAWS Wildlife Center in Lynnwood, Washington. "He's unusual."

The saga of this raptor - which the clinic staff referred to as "he," though they did not determine gender - began when it arrived at PAWS in November. The center treats about 4,000 injured animals a year, half of them birds. This patient's left humerus was broken, leaving its dappled gray wing "twisted around," Convy said. The left of its piercing, golden eyes was dilated and had a hemorrhage, probably as a result of the truck's impact.


The owl gets an eye exam before being released to the wild. Courtesy of PAWS.

A colleague of the driver had brought the owl in, Convy said, and relayed that he had been driving in Eastern Washington when he collided with a bird. Assuming it was a goner, he continued nearly 300 miles to a Seattle suburb, where he parked the truck overnight. The next day, the driver took the truck through a carwash - the kind "with frontal sprays, whirling brushes and concussive winds," according to Audubon, which first reported the owl's tale - and then drove to work. It was there that he noticed his licensed plate was bent and that something feathered and moving was near it.

The bird "was in pain," Naomi Summer, that driver's colleague, told Audubon. "Its wing was crumpled. It was cold and rainy. We really didn't expect it to survive."  But an examination at PAWS suggested otherwise. The owl's humerus was still viable, the nerves were still intact and the circulation good, Convy said.  2017-4242 spent about a month with its broken, pinned wing wrapped to its body. After the wing had healed sufficiently, the bird underwent physical therapy, which for owls involves sedation, massage and stretching. It was moved to enclosures where it could practice flying and, eventually, hunting live mice. Predictably, the owl won.  "It did beautifully," Convy said of the hunting trials.

The center has treated other birds trapped in grilles, but they typically don't survive. "Usually when an animal like that goes through such an ordeal, just the shock itself and the trauma is enough to send it over the edge, unfortunately," Convy said. The key to any wildlife rescue is getting the injured animal to a licensed rehab center quickly, which - epic road trip aside - happened fast enough in this case. Ironically, Convy added, the truck's grille might have protected the owl from both the elements and the carwash's highly chemical shower.

Earlier this year, a PAWS wildlife biologist and veterinarian drove the owl east over the Cascades, back to the region where its near-death experience began. A video shows the bird flying up to a leafless tree as honking geese soar overhead.

PAWS has dealt with other memorable cases, Convy noted. There was a large black bear that required hip surgery for a fractured femur before being returned to the great outdoors. Several seabirds, their feathers blackened by oil spills, have been cleaned up and released to the water. But in her 22 years at the center, she said she has never seen anything like 2017-4242.  "This owl was pretty popular here at the wildlife center, in that everyone was really rooting for the animal," she said. "This'll probably be a one-off."


The great horned owl after surgery to help repair a broken left wing. Courtesy of PAWS.


source: http://www.grandforksherald.com/sports/outdoors/4442826-owl-had-extraordinary-survival-story-after-very-bad-day

[The Peregrine Chick]

Rare Snowy Owl Spotted In Fort Worth
CBC DFW / 23 Feb 2018


Snowy owl spotted in Fort Worth. (Credit: Ben Sandifer)

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – A wild snowy owl was spotted in Fort Worth Thursday — a rare sighting for the species in North Texas.  Ben Sandifer filmed video of the owl, saying it was found in a large shopping center near I-35 in North Fort Worth. He said it was healthy and was flying, hunting and preening. According to Sandifer, the owl is known for having feathers with no pigment, aiding them in their habitat.

Source:  http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/02/23/snowy-owl-fort-worth/

Check this out, there is a short video (can show at top or bottom right corner of screen) - some hardcore photographers there - not sure how camo helps in the parking lot of the Courtyard Marriott in Texas though ... they do look very pleased to catch some photos of the little white darling though 

[The Peregrine Chick]

PBS - Nature - Owl Power

If you haven't had a chance, it is well worth the hour to watch Nature's "Owl Power" episode.  

Unfortunately, if you live in Canada, you can't watch the program online and at the moment, I don't know when it will be played again.  But add it to your "to watch" list.  Great mix of birds, people and birds and the science of owls (thermal images of owls at night & the true silence of barn owl wings).

if you are in the US the link is: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/owl-power-full-episode/11636/

[GCG]

   So beautiful! Thanks for posting this video, TPC!

[The Peregrine Chick]

Video / Snowy owl spotted soaring by Montreal traffic camera
CBC News / Jan 07, 2016 10:55 AM ET



Spectacular images of a snowy owl in flight have been captured by Transport Quebec's traffic camera along Montreal's Highway 40.
The images were captured on Jan. 3 by a traffic camera at Highway 40 and Sources Boulevard.

Check out the rest of the story and the video at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/snowy-owl-flying-transport-quebec-traffic-camera-1.3393343

[GCG]

Yesterday, December 26th, 2 more Snowy Owls were released at Oak Hammock Marsh. Saw this on the CBC site with a video.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/rehabilitated-snowy-owls-released-manitoba-1.3380384

[GCG]

Snowy owls have been re-released at OHM

http://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/once-starving-snowy-owls-return-to-the-wild-1.2706585

video......

http://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=773204

From the Winnipeg Free Press....

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Rescued-snowy-owls-spread-wings-after-6-weeks-in-recovery--362984041.html

[Moonstar]

So sad.  They are such gorgeous birds.