First, I can’t take credit for finding this Great Horned Owl and its nest–a friend of mine found it purely by chance this week and sent me some photos. She offered to take me there but I cannot give up its location. I’ll just say it is on private property in the mid Cape area.

Two young owls are still in the nest.

They cannot fly yet though they can scramble around the branches of the tree a bit. You can see some of what remains of the nest beneath them. Great horned owls do not make their own nest but take over other nests, especially those made by red tailed hawks. We found another older nest in a tree not too far away which may have been used last year.

In the above shot you can see that the young owlet is growing its feathers and will soon be ready to fly.

We knew mom couldn’t be too far away and we were right. She had been watching us but when I tried to take her picture she turned away.

Eventually she turned and gave me a good owly glare…

She then took off….heading out over a nearby field, arousing the suspicion and ire of neighborhood jays and crows….Check out those round wing feathers that help this big bird fly silently through the night…

We went back to watching the owlets who were also watching us…

and before we left we had to check out the pellets beneath the tree, of course. These owls are still being brought food by their mother and I will not share them all here but the pellets showed a well rounded, high protein diet that included small mammals and birds. ‘Nuff said, as my grandmother would have said.