Saw-Whet Owl St. Clair county

[Russell Emmons]

Last night quite late before turning in I went out back to feed our chickens/geese/ducks. Flipped on the side floodlight, and as I was walking back along the drive I spotted a Saw-Whet Owl not 20 feet from me sitting on the doghouse (no dogs in it!)  along side the garage right in the light!  It looked me straight in the eye and turned its head back & forth looking around.   I froze and backed up setting the bucket on the hood of the car. Went inside quickly, called my wife, got the binocs and camera. As we both looked out at it from the kitchen window, whereas it quickly then took off ---- no photo op!
   The past few days Blue Jays, Chickadees, Titmouses, Nuthatches, Woodpeckers have been real agitated out back around the Siberian Elms and Japanese Corkscrew Willows which still have green thick foilage. Now I realize they likely spotted this guy in there and were "mobbing" Today I checked our small grove of Austrian pines and those thick green trees for signs of it roosting.---No luck, but I bet he is and has been around for awhile as we have several feeders, a couple that are ground feeders and I have to believe it was staking them out for night mice!  Also I noted a Flying Squirrel in a feeder last night which would likely make a good meal for the Owl!

On the 14th we had our first Tree Sparrow of the season, and we have a Sharp-Shinned Hawk raiding our feeders now & then, plus still several Red-breasted Nuthatches, visiting the feeders!

Russ Emmons, Casco Twp. St. Clair county
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/mich-chat/attachments/20071118/4aa3b224/attachment.html