Tag Archives: powerful owl

Birds

A typical autumn walk

Here is a slideshow of my walk with Vika this morning. I took 119 photos with the Nikon D3000 DSLR. I’m showing you seventeen.
If you want to see any of the images larger, simply pause the slideshow, right click, and select ‘view image’. I’ve kept the quality down since there are so many.

(START) cows and kangaroos from the highway
galahs arrived, waiting for seed
walking along the service road
magpie
magpie
flying magpie
the wattlebird followed us
powerful owl in oak tree
owl sizing up my dog
neighbours’ sheep
kangaroos’n cows from the lane
kanagroos ‘n cows
heading back home
flying cockatoos
two flying magpies
did someone say pusscat? (cat sunning on a bin)
what took you so long (END)

Seeing the owl is becoming typical. Apparently owls will intermittently return to the same roosts for several years. Once the leaves fall from the oak, I suppose it will seek a better place. This one was staring pretty intently at Vika, as if sizing her up for its next meal. They can take down quite big prey and would tackle Vika quite easily! Vika had her tail between her legs, so maybe she knew it was up there … or she maybe she saw a cat.

Thanks for looking, have a nice day.

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the service road - the owl roosts in the oak tree
Birds

Hoo Hoo: Powerful Owl

I’ve been seeing the Powerful Owl again, two days in a row over the weekend. Always the single owl. It is used to me, now, and will not even open its eyes to look at me or the dog. I took these photos last week.  The featured photo is the service road the dog and I walk on each morning. The owl/s sometimes roost in the oak tree (the light green one).

owl watching me from the oak tree

I wasn’t as lucky as the first time – no sunlight bringing out the eyes

 

Taken with the Nikon D3000. I cropped the images and optimized in IrfanView, and applied the frame mask with FastStone (both free)

 

owl looking down at me

I walked underneath it, and bingo, got the eyes, so cute! I love the pattern in his feathers, especially the way they interleave.

 

Have a good day. ❤

LINK to a page with two owls, one with prey in its claws.

 

 

 

 

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Birds, Other Stuff

On my walk this morning …

It began as usual, early. The dog and I walked as far as we could go to our right after leaving home  – not far. I decided to take a photo in all four directions from that spot.  The directions are approximate.  (Nokia Lumia 530 windows phone)

looking east, gums and poplars

Looking East

 

looking North, houses, elm, road

Looking North

 

looking South, trees, paddocks

Looking South

 

And, turning West, I decided it wasn’t such a good idea since you mostly get the back of the hay shed, but …

looking West, the back of a hayshed, house, elm, stockyards

Looking West

 

Now, I know you know that there is an owl in this walk – presuming you see the Featured Image at the beginning of the post.  Three-quarters along the service road is a large oak tree and the birds were pretty active else I would never have noticed the pair of owls.

A crow was cawing, magpies warbling and the pair of lorikeets were chitter chatting raucously in a nearby flowering gum tree. And there they were – a pair of owls! To say I was astonished would be an understatement.

 

pair of owls

Australia’s largest owl – the Powerful Owl

Lucky for me they were still there when I finished walking Vika. I grabbed the Nikon D3000 and returned. Glad I don’t have to show you the grainy phone  pictures I took.

If you are not squeamish, do follow this link to a page with the full photos.

The owl on the right is holding something quite dead. That was okay until I noticed giblets hanging. Yuk. Okay, but could that be head dangling!  Yukky yuk. So, your choice!

 

Birdlife Australia says …

… Its main item of prey is possums of various species… They roost by day, perched in the dense shade of a tree, often with the previous night’s prey held in its talons; this is when Powerful Owls are seen most often…

 

Well, there you go, then. Not a strange sight at all. I would never have noticed them if other birds were not so active nearby. 

Powerful Owl, with Prey

Have a good day.    🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

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