My husband and I were our way home from a family gathering at night just before Christmas, and I was listening to him tell a story so it took me a moment to realize that a giant bird was flying toward our truck—-again, at night! The sky was so bright from the snow that was falling that it didn’t occur to me right away that it’s not normal to see large birds flying at night.
The creature continued to cruise toward us and then landed in a giant Blue Spruce tree in front of a church. I’m guessing it was a Great-horned Owl.
(While 99.999% of the photos on this blog are mine, this is one is a freebie from the internet—I have never had the pleasure of being near enough to a visible Great-horned Owl to snap a photo):
I occasionally hear Great-horned Owl mates calling to each other at night in our neighborhood. And a few years ago, while at a backyard gathering after dusk, some friends and I watched the dark silhouettes of some juvenile Great-horned Owls fly above us as we sat around a campfire. The young birds continually called to one another.
It’s weird to think that these owls start nesting in winter when the winds are still howling and fierce snowstorms are possible.
Here’s a fun fact about Great-horned Owls from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
“If you hear an agitated group of cawing American Crows, they may be mobbing a Great Horned Owl. Crows may gather from near and far and harass the owl for hours. The crows have good reason, because the Great Horned Owl is their most dangerous predator.”