Great Horned Owls: First Encounter

One day in October, three years ago, I was walking around the Old Burying Ground at about 6 p.m. Suddenly, I was face to face with a full-grown owl, sitting low-to-the-ground on a gravestone…

Up to that time, I was used to lying in bed at night and hearing an owl after midnight… Hoo. Hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo. I decided to begin an “Owl Watch” in the evenings. One owl appeared regularly, perched high up on the cross above the Methodist Church.

Getting good photographs was difficult due to poor lighting. I apologize for such pitiful images…

That winter I waited for the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) every evening, as I could see the cross clearly from my front porch. It didn’t take me long to discover that hooting calls were coming from the cross and from a second owl elsewhere. Yes, two owls– a pair keeping tabs on one another!

It turns out, the pair of owls were year-round residents of the Old Burying Ground, using it at nights as their own private hunting ground. During daylight hours, I found them sleeping high up in the huge live oak trees.

Great Horned Owls have amazing eyes. Maybe they can’t move them up or down and side to-side like humans, but they compensate with the ability to rotate their heads 270 degrees.

How big are those yellow eyes? If an owl was the size of a human, their eyes would be the size of oranges!

Here are my other owl posts to visit:

• Great Horned Owl Nestlings >>
• Owl Nest, Part 1 >>
• Own Nest, Part 2 >>