Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Weeknight Screeching

It is what it is, and what it is is not much weekend birding, a proper morning of crappy fast food breakfast and day lists pushing 100. Instead it's stealing out fora  few hours on a Tuesday to see what Owls might be poking around (not Elf Owls, with the recent cold front, dammit) and how many times one might be almost-trampled by the feral horses along the Salt River.




Western Screech-Owls might not have the majesty nor the accommodating gifts of the Humboldt County Great Gray--in fact, they lose out to that bird in every department except maybe for "Best Owl to Sneak Home in One's Cargo Shorts," but hey it's only 4 weeks until school it out, and much like the shade of Voldemort ghosting through the woods feeding on unicorn's blood (is that an obscure reference yet?) the Salt River Owls will keep me alive.

My buddy Will joined me for this particular foray, and while the Owl selfie game still needs work, out teamwork did prevent us from falling victim to the unpleasant and unwashed busybody guy that followed us around for a little while, more I think out of boredom and loneliness than genuine masculine attraction (although, you know, a bit of that).


Western Screech-Owl, showing its bloomers.

6 comments:

  1. :) There are some years that suck for birding. This is one of them for me. I had to pull back a tad. Sticking around down here. January and February were promising but with finals and school coming to an end, it's nearly impossible to do better work. You did well. At least you weren't shot at like we were this year. The Salt River area would be awesome if they took the hunting bit out along the more populated stretch. Hang in there. And nice photos! PS. There are a lot of creepy people around that area. It's one of your nicer areas up in Maricopa besides the Mt. Ord area. Unfortunately, nasty people hang out in that area. Mt. Ord is good only if you have a bold car:)

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  2. Handsome owl. And to kids these days I think that a book published 20 years ago is fittingly obscure... especially if they only saw the movie and kind of missed the whole unicorn part. Kids these days.

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    1. Damn 20 years ago? You're right though.
      I really feel like people are not factoring in Unicorn parasitism as a factor in creasing life expectancy.

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    2. Parasitism? That was straight predation!

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    3. Ok...but only because he was bad at it, total newboe mistake of overfeeding. Ideally one would keep the beast alive indefinitely.

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