A few bird photo's

[DLJeff]

This great horned owl was sitting in the ghost juniper in our backyard this evening. We think it's a different owl than that other one we've been seeing. This one is darker (front and back) and I think slightly larger. He let me walk across the lawn and passed him in the tree to get a couple photos, even closed his eyes and took a little nap. Then he opened one eye and I could hear him "Okay, slick, I see you and if you get any closer you'll regret it." I love these raptors.

[DLJeff]

This great horned owl was sitting in the ghost juniper in our backyard this evening. We think it's a different owl than that other one we've been seeing. This one is darker (front and back) and I think slightly larger. He let me walk across the lawn and passed him in the tree to get a couple photos, even closed his eyes and took a little nap. Then he opened one eye and I could hear him "Okay, slick, I see you and if you get any closer you'll regret it." I love these raptors.

[John H]

You have him at eye level and you can move around to get the background you like. That is a pretty good photo op for a horned owl. I saw one in Mexico in a palm tree. Hooded orioles were going crazy in the tree and in the process of looking at them I realized I was looking right at a horned owl. Quite a surprise.

[DLJeff]

The scrub jays are our alert mechanism here. Anytime you hear a raucous group of scrub jays it's 90% of the time because they're mobbing a hawk or owl who happened to perch in their territory.

PS: Sorry for the double post. The site is acting a little screwing lately, especially when posting photos. It often routes me to a 404 error message, but if I try it a second time it works, slowly, but it works.

[Tony Buzolich]

I'm glad to hear that other folks are having the same kind of problem with the site. Mine has been acting up for a long time and seems to be getting worse, That 404 comes up all the time, and then later it seems to work at a snails pace.

[DLJeff]

The western scrubjays (and most of the other songbirds for that matter) don't like the owls and hawks hanging around. But sometimes they aren't real sure what to do about it.

[John H]

That owl is right out in the open. They are usually buried in the trees but that one is right out there begging to get his photo taken.

It is funny how birds just yell in each other faces. They don’t hold back on expressing their dislike of others. If there were birds on this message board they would get booted off all the time for saying nasty things.

I saw a couple condors last weekend at Pinnacles. They were soaring about 800 feet above the campground. We hiked up over the top of the Pinnacles looking for them but saw only vultures. Fortunately the condors were nice enough to soar by our campsite and give us a look. There are only 300 condors flying around in the world. They were down to 30 in 1983 when they caught them all and started captive breeding. Lead poisoning accounts for half of their deaths. They live 60 to 70 years if they don’t eat a carcass shot with lead. One gram of ingested lead will kill a condor.

[DLJeff]

That owl is right out in the open. They are usually buried in the trees but that one is right out there begging to get his photo taken.

It is funny how birds just yell in each other faces. They don’t hold back on expressing their dislike of others. If there were birds on this message board they would get booted off all the time for saying nasty things.

I saw a couple condors last weekend at Pinnacles. They were soaring about 800 feet above the campground. We hiked up over the top of the Pinnacles looking for them but saw only vultures. Fortunately the condors were nice enough to soar by our campsite and give us a look. There are only 300 condors flying around in the world. They were down to 30 in 1983 when they caught them all and started captive breeding. Lead poisoning accounts for half of their deaths. They live 60 to 70 years if they don’t eat a carcass shot with lead. One gram of ingested lead will kill a condor.

He was out there again yesterday evening.

That's cool. I helped build the condor aviary up in the Pinnacles back in 2000 or there abouts. They approached large companies for volunteer work crews. We had to schlep all the materials and tools up to the aviary on foot. It was July and around 100F midday. We had to dig by hand, cut wood by hand, etc, no power tools allowed. We had to stand six large poles to support the retention nets. We had to dig a ditch 3 ft deep around the complete perimeter so we could bury the galvanized wire fence. If we didn't, the wild hogs would dig under the fence to get at the carrion they fed the condors with. The aviary is used to acclimate the condors and get them to imprint on the Pinnacles area so they didn't wander off and get into trouble elsewhere. They invited us to come up when they released the condors but I was travelling for work and missed it.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Sadly, I have no photos of this amazing event I witnessed this week.


I was standing on my driveway at the front of my garage talking with a fishing buddy.

Like an F-18 fight on a strafing run, a Ball Eagle came down and scooped up a squirrel from my street.

It pulled up from the dive at a high rate of speed and was gone, that fast.



It was a shocking event for me.


We do have lots of birds of prey in Florida because 85% of the state is still undeveloped land.

[DLJeff]

Very cool thing to see Bill. Bald eagles are mostly scavengers so pretty cool to see one snatch a squirrel like that.