Towheeblog

Eliz Linser got this image with her cell phone, and explained to me: “Late afternoon Saturday, I ventured to one of my favorite and one of the most sacred sites in Oregon’s First Nation and Willamette River history, the Canemah Bluffs.  The great-horned owl family  ought to be busy  preparing for another generation.  As  I descended upon the trail to the historic pioneer cemetery gates, one owl flew overhead.  As I stood at the base of a 135 year-old Pacific yew, I spotted a mature GHO perched upon a Douglas fir branch.    We watched each other awhile, time passing, the world calm and still.    As I trekked through the woods, I found a dead long-tailed shrew on the ground.  Apparently it was not even enticing bird food.  In the distance I saw another owl heading in flight towards a tree stand yonder.  The owls may be nesting in that area this season, hunting at Canemah.”

Then click here for link to Great Gray Owl video captured in southern Cascades by owl-man Lee French of Ashland. One person who saw the video commented: “Wish I still had the flexibility to scratch my ear with my toes. When it was staring down at the grass, it reminded me of some of the glares I got from my grade school teachers when I was messing around.”
I will add only this slight revision to video interpretation. The owl’s ears are in the front of that superb sensory disc, one below each eye, offset so that their hearing has “bi-focal” ability to locate source of noise…don’t you wish your ears cold triangulate, too? So GGO was actually scratching the edge of his skull which is about half the diameter of the face you see….many layers of feathers there which allows this bird to use his padded skull to break through crust on snow and not risk breaking a leg or losing a foot!