Flybys Still!!

As you already know we had no live stream Monday night. Tuesday night we were fortunate enough to have at least a few early morning hours of live stream. 3:54am finds Salt on the side branch (that is his old roosting spot). It is very windy, and the roads are wet. Salt really had to hold on a few times. 4:11am I hear a flyby screech both Salt and I thought Pepper was coming in...nope, Salt just watched her go by. Pepper lands on the box roof at 4:42am, obviously has been chased or chasing another owl. Both Salt and Pep heads turning watching. After the owls watched the flybys for a bit, Salt proceeded to join Pepper on the box roof and we have the only mating session seen this night. Then they both moved to the front edge of the roof, both looking down at branch to entryway. We thought they would go into the box, but flybys were still going on and Pepper took off after it, with Salt in tow. At 5:21am both fly on to side branch at the same time; again watching the flybys. Pepper is off again after whatever owl is flying by..that's our girl; she don't take crap from anyone!! In the meantime Salty boy is still sitting on the side branch (his usual ho-hum laid back self). At 5:40am Salt leaves and neither return. 

So far we have seen a decent amount of mating, no bonding. Salt has gone into the box twice, while Pepper was around and proceeded to call her in. Both times stubborn Pepper just let him twitter on until she saw the coast was clear and finally went into the box. We have not seen Salt bring a rodent gift yet.

 

I am posting photos of Salt and Pepper for you here for comparison. As I said before wing patches are hard to go by because they distort under different stance, or lighting. The best way is by the Ceres area. Hopefully these will help you to distinguish between the two.


One last thing - I would like to remind any one watching to please write down your information on what you see and post it on the "Your Report" section of this blog. Please don't think, well someone else probably did - I would rather see double posts than none at all. Thank you to Karen who has been posting when she is able to watch.

F.Y.I. 

When facing an intruder, barn owls squint their eyes, spread their wings and sway their head back and forth while hissing. If the intruder is not scared away by this display, the owl falls on its back and strikes at the intruder with it's feet.