The other day I was chatting with our friend Jenny Wertz. She said she heard a sound outside her house a little earlier and when she went out to see what it was, she spied an owl on their TV antenna. When the owl noticed that it had been seen, it flew away making a screeching sound as it did so. The screech made Jenny assume it was a Screech Owl.
As we talked, we were looking up screech owls on the internet. She found an interesting website about owls:
http://www.owlpages.com/sounds.php
It turns out that from the calls you can listen to on this page, the great horned owl was a more likely ID. Coupled with her observation that the owl had a large wing span when it took off adds further proof.
As she was following the leads on her computer, I was looking up images on mine. I came across this picture of 3 baby screech owls that sent me on a trip down memory lane.
When I was quite small, maybe 7 or 8 we lived at 3117 Merle Hay Road in Des Moines, Iowa. This would probably be about 1955 or 56.
One day my mom shooshed me and had me follow her to the front window where the curtains had been drawn. She carefully pulled back the curtain and there, not 18″ away from me where 3 screech owl babies. I remember them looking just like the 3 little cuties you see above. In the picture of our house I’ve circled where they were. You can make out the bushes which must have grown some by the time the owls appeared.
I talked with Mom about it, but the little guys must not have made the same impression on her as they did a 7 year old.
They are really cute.
How is Ms. Wertz? I did my first practicum teaching ever with her 🙂
Tell her I said “hi”