Owl spotting

I have spent a fair amount of my life in the outdoors, at least much more than the average American. I have camped, hiked, and canoed in wilderness areas, and I go running in the mornings around my neighborhood. All of that time outside has let me see a lot of the animals that live around us. Almost everyone has seen the common animals like squirrels, chipmunks, robins, doves, pigeons, seagulls, etc. Most people have seen animals like raccoons, opossums, bats, deer, turtles, foxes and the like. But it's less common to see animals like bears, moose, bald eagles, dolphins, etc. I've been lucky enough to travel to different places and I've seen some fairly exotic animals in the wild. I even seen monkeys, sloths, iguanas, parrots, and macaws while living in South America.

However, all that time outside has never let me see an owl before. They're actually pretty tough to spot. By virtue of the fact that they hunt at night, they are much less visible than other birds. They are also completely silent when the fly, so an owl could fly twenty feet above your head and you'd probably never know it. So despite the fact that they live and hunt in the same places people live, they are rarely seen. You've probably heard an owl before, but they are a lot harder to see.

Early Monday morning I went running on a path around a local golf course, and the path took me up on a small ridge overlooking a creek and the golf course. I've heard an owl in that area before, but until Monday I had never seen it. I heard its call and I froze because it was extremely close. I looked around, and I happened to have the perfect view of the owl silhouetted against the soft pink where the sun was going to rise. It was up in a tree, but because the tree was down by the creek and I was on the ridge, it was almost level with me. The first thing that I noticed was how big the owl was -- large birds don't actually weigh much, but it was the size of an eagle. I could tell from the tufts of feathers on its head that it was a Great Horned Owl. It kept hooting, and it silently flew back and forth from one branch of the tree to another, always looking around. I could see it's head turn at least 180 degrees, which was really funny looking.

I eventually had to keep on running since I was getting cold, but I went back and did a bit of research on Great Horned Owls. Apparently they mate very early in the year (January), so the owl I saw was probably trying to attract a mate. It was lucky for me, too, because I would have never noticed it if it hadn't been calling and making a display. I found out a bunch of other cool facts too. For example, owls' ears are placed asymmetrically with one higher and farther back than the other, which gives them superior ability to detect the location of a sound. Great Horned Owls eat everything from mice to Great Blue Herons, which have wingspans of up to 7 feet. I found one report of a Great Horned Owl actually killing a human, which is supposedly the only case of a person being killed by a bird of prey. The person was trying to kill the owl's eggs and the bird attacked. I'm rather skeptical, personally, but I suppose that a dive-bombing four-pound bird could knock someone off a ladder. I also found a bunch of online discussions about whether a Great Horned Owl could kill a small dog like a pug, which seems much more likely to me.