July 13, 2013
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More Owls and a Scorpion
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.
