[EBB Sightings] Big (bird) Trouble in the 'Hood

It is rare that I am treated as a scoldable outsider when I walk my favorite park, Huckleberry Preserve. So when I heard the resident Stellars Jays going crazy with calls, I figured something was up. A recent fender bender hasn't made that treetop peering any easier, so I braced myself against an arching bay, and looked around for the jay activity. 

Rag, rag rag went the jays, but I just saw the merest glimpses of birds thru the dense foliage. But whoah! There's the source of the discord! A huge, great horned owl was perched high up in a bare bay fork. The day was coming to a close, and light was leaving the sky, but it wasn't quite time to hunt. 

But those jays weren't letting up, nervously diving at the owl from behind. In the upper canopy I heard one give a pathetic, tremulous, close-but-no-cigar red-tail call...a not too loud, please don't notice me, help! predator! Apparently the jays don't get a lot of night practice doing hoot owls, or worse yet, don't wanna call one in, and I could see why. The owls' huge, bright yellow feet with their razor tipped talons looked about as big as the jays; heck, they were scaring ME! 

And this bird was BIG. He looked like a giant, brown feathered pear perched up in his tree. But he didn't much care for his vulnerable position, so down he flew to the ground, to back up into some sword ferns and wait for night to Fall, and the flying dance of death to begin. 

I have heard these owls many times around here at dusk, but I have never had an opportunity to watch them and the way that they create terror in their woodland world. Wow. 

It was so totally worth a sore neck.

Debbie Viess
Oakland