Big Ass Bird!!

I was wandering around in the woods behind the house a few days ago when, all of a sudden, this very large creature rose from the ground. It was a big ass Owl. He landed on a branch and stared right at me. He looked pissed. So I ran into the house and got my trusty digital camera. I took 3 pictures of the sucker, but only one was unblurry enough to make out the owl. It's times like this when I think I need a camera with a good zoom lens, maybe one of those expensive SLR digitals. Anyhow, here he is.



It's hard to tell from the picture how big this guy is but I would estimate him to be about 14-18 inches tall, or maybe bigger, sitting up on that branch. Anyhow, I tried to get closer and he flew away.

I think he lives back in woods behind the house. Often, if I'm outside at night, I can hear a pretty loud hooting not far from the house, just into the woods. He's helping the cats rid the area of rodents. He's a good neighbor and I like him, even if he don't like me.

I'm gonna go look in Wikipedia and see if I can find out more about him.

Bye for now.

OK, I'm back. Wikipedia was not very helpful in figuring out what kind of owl it was so I went downstairs and got out our Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds. It's a Barred Owl. If you search Barred Owl in Wikipedia, you get better information. There's even an audio clip of the barred owl. However, the audio doesn't sound like the sound that I hear in the woods at night. Maybe it's something different, like Sasquatch, maybe.

OK, bye for good this time.

OK, I'm back again. The idea of having Sasquatch in the back yard got me a bit concerned so I did a bit more digging. I looked up "owl sounds" in Google and found, can you believe this, all the damn owl sounds you could ever imagine. There were 4 different ones for the Barred owl. The first two sounded like the one from Wikipedia, but the third, the "hoo-wah" sound, was like the sound I hear in the woods at night. So it is my friend, the barred owl and not sasquatch after all.

Now I can sleep soundly. Bye, and I'm serious this time.