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Posted by Joel N Rosenthal on 20:50:26 02/16/15
Recent shoulder replacement surgery and the antecedent arthritis have rendered my left arm useless for photography and fly fishing these last 4 months, but, on the bright side, I expect to discard the sling and begin therapy soon, so that I can lift 5 pounds of camera gear over my waist and haul on my flyline as the occasion demands. So, it was sans camera that Emily and I decided to zip over to the Coe visitor Center at ENP on Sunday morning to see the great horned owl chicks. In the course of 2 visits over a three hour period, we were able to get some fine views , with and without 8x binoculars , of this pair of predators to be, in their seemingly uncomfortably small quarters. Today I decided, gimpy arm and all, to return and perhaps manage to get some photos of the pair, as my mantra has always been "the bird not photographed is the bird not seen".Lifting over 5 lbs of camera and lens with a dead and painful left arm proved to be somewhat daunting, but pointing out the birds to the dozens of visitors who would never have looked up, and interacting with people from all over the US and world would have been reward enough, but for the surprise excitement that a midday visit from mother great horned owl created.I had no sooner finished telling one onlooker about the great horned owl I photographed at ENP in 08, but
had missed the times when she was seen with a snake,than the adult landed on a branch 3 feet from the nest with a freshly killed snake for the childrens'
midday meal. Unfortunately, as mom inched her way down the limb towards the nest, one of the excited chicks half fell out of the nest and had to do some prodigous scrambling and wing flapping to get itself back in the nest.Mom decided to abandon the effort for the moment and flew off to another tree, snake still secured in her beak--no doubt to return later when the children werebetter behaved--or calmer. I managed to take some somewhat fuzzy photos of mom, the chicks and some of the encounter, so if you haven't seen the mother, her portrait, with snake, is at the link below.And if you haven't seen Trey's video of the chicks, it's the next best thing to seeing them in person.
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