I'm another captive owl--I live with Marge Gibson at the Raptor Education Group, Inc. in Antigo, Wisconsin. Marge is the nicest human being on the planet, and I love my life, but still. I'd just as soon never hear of another owl or any other bird needing to be rehabbed because it got scared and flew across a road.When we cavity-roosting owls have a nice, safe hole, we can poke our heads out to catch some rays, but if we get scared we just pull right in and you can't even tell we're home! But when we're new in an area and haven't found a cavity, or if some blasted squirrel or starling boots us out, it sucks to be discovered by people when we're trying to hide out on a branch. You have NO idea how scary it is for us when you ginormous people walk up, saying stuff like "Oh, look! He's so tame!" when really, we're scared out of our gourds! But if we fly away, some stupid chickadee is sure to spot us, and then all hell breaks loose. So we sit tight, quaking in our talons, and hope for the best. Hope IS the thing with feathers, after all. But sometimes I think people have no respect for us at all.
2 comments:
Really enjoying all your wonderful close-ups. Believe it or not last winter I had an Eastern Screech Owl in a wood duck house in my woods. It even got shown on the MOU website!
Why thank you! Of course, the photographer never pays us a red cent, or even provides us with tasty mice or anything at all--imagine that!
Screech owls are like us saw-whets--if they don't want to be gawked at, they pull their head in, just like we do. So I'm sure you didn't scare it one bit.
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