Early Saturday morning, around 7am, I was awaken by the familiar hooting sound cause by the owl I saw two days ago. I was dead asleep like a log on the bed.. so for a good 45 minutes, did nothing to seek out where it was. I finally got up at my scheduled alarm time (plus one snooze) at 7.55am. Almost at the same instance, my mother barged in to tell me they spotted the owl from their bathroom window, starring directly at them 

So it’s fun with the camera again! Yep, it was the same young owl. Nice, pretty and white. Unfortunately the windows got in the way (those finned types) preventing a full-clear shot, but it was good enough to capture its essence. 

The young barred eagle owl roosting near the house

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After spending 10 minutes snapping pictures, I notice in two occasions that feathers were dropping from above. My mind was still slow then.. but soon it caught on to me there was another bird directly on top. So we looked out for one.. and did notice a dark patch behind the leaves, barely visible even in the above picture. 

 

It was an adult! Couldn’t tell if it’s the mother or father, but it collaborates the claim that it the parents are always near by. The one seen in the above picture is not the owl the feathers were dropping from.. there was another owl out of view higher in the tree – a total of three owls. This was really my most blessed day!

 

Notice the cute hooting at the start of the video. It made that sound all morning. 

An adult barred eagle owl. It actually looked smaller than the juvenile. 

Two owls in one frame.. flipping awesome.

I had to leave for work (was almost late) at 8.25am.. but when I got home at 5pm.. they were still there! On different branches though. I mounted my tripod and went in for a closer look. Unfortunately I spooked the adult away. 15 minutes later, a massive storm came in and they went elsewhere to seek shelter. 

According to my dad, he has been hearing their hoots for many days.. just never occurred to us that it was an owl. From that one hoot in the video, I’m sure anyone would mistaken it for.. I dunno.. a pigeon? For all we know, they could’ve been our neighbours for a long time.. I seriously won’t mind if they were! Of course there was the concern with the cats. We might think of covering the entire enclosure completely. At the moment the top is exposed.. a security risk for the cats. There is also suspicion that the owls came from another patch of land a few houses away which was recently cleared to build a house. Hope is not the case. If we do completely enclosed the cat area, we might consider making a new home (bird house) for the owls. That will be alot of fun..!

 

My wildlife encounter continued in the evening when I mom came home, sounding frantic. Reason – there was a scorpion right at our doorstep.

We’ve seen this one before. It was a Asian Forest Scorpion. Non-lethal venom, but it will still hurt like hell. 

What’s worse? Well, it could’ve got into our shoes.. and that would’ve been more exciting. Notice the shoe rack.. one door is missing. Basically cracked. I got it fixed immediately after this encounter. 

My dad removed the stinger-ready bug using only a small handheld dustpen. Apparently he used to play with scorpions when he was a kid. 

Truly an exciting day.. thank God for it too. I really needed the distractions. We’ll see if they were worthwhile. 

 

We got a real treat today when an owl popped by over our house this evening, around 7.30pm. We were observing my cats which were starring at something at the side of the house and did see two birds flying away, gliding rather than flapping wings, but were never able to identify them. That brought our attention to something else, a noise seemingly coming from the other side of the house. I went over and looke

d about.. and saw a white animal on one of the branches of the tree located in the middle of the house. 

Being a little far away, I couldn’t tell what it was until I got the camera and snapped a few shots. I was excited to find that it was an owl. I went back into the house again to collect the tripod as the camera needed a more stable platform to be able to “collect enough light” that late in the day. 

 

The darn thing wouldn’t stay still though.. constantly moving it’s head sideways. I wasn’t able to focus well enough for most of my shots, but did manage to capture the feature of this animal. 

 

It was a Barred or Malay Eagle Owl. Despite it’s size, it was still a juvenile, which we can tell from it’s white feathers. The adults are brown. It has interesting eyebrow/ears, which define it’s main features.

It was clearly unafraid of us, flying from one tree to another tree towards our direction, coming towards us, eyes fixed in us. It was curious of who we were. After a 10-15 minute show, it flew off to the trees opposite of the house.. too dark to notice anymore.

 

Checking up more on the internet, I found that this species was quite interesting.. mating pairs mate and stick together for life, go back to the same nest every year and take care of one egg/chick annually. The parents of this owl was probably hanging around somewhere when this picture was taken. 

Although it was quite a cool experience, we were worried for our pets.. one swoop from an owl this size.. it’s truly bye-bye for any animal. I guess we need to be extra careful.