Tag: great horned owl baby

Back on the trail after 3 years.

On By dinajohnstonIn bird photography1 Comment

I missed this sunrise. I hadn’t been out to Circle B Bar Reserve in 3 years. It was time to go back. Not much had changed. The trails looked the same in general. One of the main trails, Alligator Alley, was closed due to damage from the hurricanes last year but there is still a lot to see out here and many other trails. The sun was just coming up when I walked out on Heron Hideout trail in mid-March.

Looking out over the marsh at the intersection of Marsh Rabbit Run and Heron Hideout. Those cypress trees in the middle are still there.

Bur marigolds were still out in some spots along the trail. Their peak bloom is in November when the marsh is covered with them.

You have to look down below when getting close to edge on the raised trail. You never know what’s lurking in the marsh below.

A great blue heron showing off his breeding wispy feathers. He had his eye on something moving in the water and wasn’t paying any attention to me.

It was a quiet morning and very few people as I made my way down Marsh Rabbit Run trail. The ponds along this trail have gotten choked up with vegetation.

The moon was still up behind a cormorant.

A roseate spoonbill flies by.

I stopped by the great horned owl nest before leaving and could only see one baby sitting up. The other baby was sleeping behind him.

I took a lot more pictures so more to come on this trip.

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A new owl family

On By dinajohnstonIn bird photography3 Comments

After the loss of both great horned owl parents (and babies) in 2022 in a nearby park from rat poison I was hesitant to stop by when I heard a new couple had moved into the nest tree. New owls met and paired up last year and hung around the nest for several months but did not have babies. I never did make it over there because I was still heart broken after the loss of the family the year before. The locals named them Odie and Dory (named after Odet Philippe and his wife Dorothy who were the first settlers in Safety Harbor and brought grapefruit to the area). This year I heard they were back and on a nest so I stopped by in late January to see Dory up on the nest.

Odie was nearby napping in the moss.

In early February I made another stop and Dory was still on the nest but there was a rumor that someone had seen a tiny baby on the nest. She was acting like something was going on but we didn’t see any feeding yet.  Maybe the baby was still too small to see and the nest was much higher up and harder to see.

Two weeks later we could see the baby. This was right before sunset and we waited until dark hoping to catch a feeding but Dad didn’t come in with food until it was too dark to shoot anything.

A week later I took my sister over to see the owls while she was visiting. Odie was moving around and being cute. It looked like he was eating a bug on the branch.

The baby was sitting up on a branch a few feet away from Mom where it was very visible.  It mostly slept while we were there and we didn’t stay long. This was the last I saw of it. I heard a few days later the baby was seen injured and then disappeared. People think another raptor must have gotten the baby. The non-expert owl watchers were thinking since Dory was a new Mom she wasn’t sure how to take care of it. Either way it was sad again. We’ll have to wait until next winter to see if they nest again.