Cuteness and its many forms

If you recall from this post, Thirteen our screech owl is going through the atypical feather molt that seems to be the bane of captive screech owls everywhere.
A week after I took those photos, I went in to get him again.  Things are looking up....but little dude still has a long way to go.


At least his ear tufts are coming back...
No matter how many feathers he loses, I still think Thirteen is cute.
Sort of like a Jim Henson creation.  Think about Animal.  That's one weird looking thing.  But we all love him anyway, right?

If he let me, I would love to help him preen off all of those feather sheaths....



A few things to point out, since it's not every day you get to observe a screech owl so closely:

The nictitating membrane:  (from the Latin nictare, to blink)
This is a membrane present in many animals such as birds, reptiles and sharks.  Some mammals have a vestigal nictitating membrane (We humans have it...the pink bit in the inner corner) while some mammals have a fully active, controllable membrane.


They are either transparent or translucent....in the above photo, we can clearly see the disapproval and embarrassment through the membrane.




Another cool thing:
The ears of an owl are set near the face, close to the sides but facing forward.  In the Tytonidae owl species (such as Barn Owls), and the aperture is rounded and asymmetrical (the left ear is set higher than the right), but in the Strigidae owls, the shape of the aperture varies.
An owl's range of audible sounds is not dissimilar to ours, but their hearing is so acute at certain frequencies they are able to hear the slightest movement of their prey.
The facial disc that every owl species possesses funnels sound waves right to the ears, acting like a satellite dish.  And they are able to manipulate those feathers to calculate where their prey is.  Barn owls' hearing is so acute, they can find their prey in total darkness.


And when the satellite dish falls off, we can see right in there.
If you can see the hole in Thirteen's head, behind and just under his eye?  This is the ear canal. 

I love this photo just for the glint of sunlight in his eye.    And that pitiful ear tuft, still half wrapped in sheaths:




A completely different type of cuteness:

School begin this week and the girls are excited to be back.
A big thing around here is that Lorelei is cheerleading this year. 
And boy is she good at it.  It comes to her naturally, this whole ra-ra thing.

This beautiful and good-natured child has been fun to be with since birth.  Shoot....even delivering her was EASY.


Today we got to watch her do her very first cheerleading gig, complete with football game.



Now, I did the cheerleading back in the day, just for a year.  I don't really know why.  I ended up being one of those ironically sarcastic teenagers who quietly sneered at cheerleaders.
So along with it being amazingly expensive, I had to struggle with my inner conflict....

But when a child really really wants to do something like this, a good mom just bites her tongue and writes the check.



(We won, too.  It was a scoreless game until the fourth quarter, when out of the blue, one of our boys had the ball and somehow outran everyone down the field for a 60 yard touchdown. 
I broke a blood vessel in my finger, I got so into it.  It was awesome.
(Maybe I didn't completely leave the cheerleading behind?)


Check this out....it starts EARLY, the whole football player/cheerleader thing:

That boy does NOT have his mind on the game.

Birds of prey in Autumn sunlight

I love the light of Autumn. It infuses everything with a richness that would be missed in other seasons.

Our new education screech owl, Thirteen...at this past weekend's Pumpkin Chuck:
(I didn't get to see any pumpkin chucking. I was mobbed by the public when they saw our birds)

I sure do love that bird. He thinks he is 10 feet tall.

Sylvester was a peach, as usual.
The only thing that makes that bird react is nesting season. He is showing signs of it now...and it's not like he becomes a punk or anything. Just gets his feathers ruffled a bit more.
Good bird.

(I even caught a circling turkey vulture above his head.)


Lucy was more than happy to demonstrate the art of raptor gourmet eating:

The quail never saw it coming.


This morning, a red-shouldered hawk awaited me as I left for the day:

Glowing with that unique Fall sunrise.

It retired to the house next door as I pulled out of the driveway.

Ah, that red. More pure and more hot than any Crayola color.

And finally, take off:

"Look, Ma! No bands!"

What I've been up to

Retro-fitting a mew for Priscilla, our Barred Owl.

BEFORE:

Since she is non-flighted, she needed a mew with lower perches. She tends to be a bit jumpy and had bruised her wing, and we have kept her in a different cage until I could go in and finesse her regular mew. I went in with a hammer and a drill and whipped that mew into shape.
For perspective, the back perch is about 6 feet high.

AFTER:
(Lower perches and different angles...plus a platform perch, 'cause she likes them)


It was fun tearing the old perches out. I couldn't get the old rusty screws out of the wall, so I just beat the crap out of them and pulled real hard. Very satisfying.
Sturdy branches for her to hop up and down on, and I even added a little floor perch next to her water bowl....so our fluffy Princess could sit and preen after baths.

:)


Covering every cage we have on the South side of the yard (where the little birds are) with hardware cloth...and that includes the roof.


After playing at CSI for awhile, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't a mink that got in to kill our Angel. It was a raccoon. It climbed the outside of the cage and reached in and grabbed her off a perch.
NEVER EVEN GOT INTO THE MEW. (We found feathers outside the cage, and found scat near one of the traps. Dammit.)

Covered.

Peeking under the RAPTOR barn:

The barn that RAPTOR leases from the Hamilton County Parks is over 100 years old. And there are the coolest nooks and crannies to explore....well, there were, until someone mortared it up today.
No one currently goes under the barn for any reason. I wonder how long that bottle has laid there? And what was in it?

Meeting a new bird:


This red morph screech owl has been with us since he/she was a nestling. (Eye injury)
Since the loss of Angel has created a space on our permit, we will be adding this cute, fierce thing to our education roster.
While meeting him/her, someone asked "which screech owl" we were talking about. Cindy said, "Thirteen", as in the thirteenth screech owl that had been admitted this year.
Turns out to be the perfect name. Everyone meet Thirteen. It works for some reason, doesn't it?
:)

A future blogger among us?

I think Isabelle will have a blog someday.
As in, she asked me the other day, "Mommy? When will I be old enough to start a blog?"
I fielded that question by telling her she has to learn how to type first.

Lately, I have to go searching for my camera because Isabelle has taken off with it into the backyard or somewhere in the house to photograph the animals.

The following photos were taken by Isabelle, my 7 year old:

A male American Goldfinch noodling under a sunflower:



Mommy, Pandora and Nellie:



*I was especially proud of her for this one*
White-breasted Nuthatch IN FLIGHT:



And Powder, doing her "FizzGig" impression:



This is Fizzgig, if you are rusty on your "Dark Crystal" characters:
















And a few photos from me:
Angel the Screech Owl at today's program at Imago, for a young photographer's club:

Perfect light, perfect bird. If we ignore that tiny tuft of Astro-Turf, we can pretend she is once again a wild owl.

This was weird.
Strolling the yard, I saw what I thought was some cool fungus in a pine tree:


Nope. That's not fungus. That's a deer vertebra. In a tree.

I had to laugh when I realized how it got there.
The remains of the skeleton we found here are still buried under the weeds, and I assume that when the body was still fresh, some critter pulled a vertebra into the tree for a meal.
Looking at the picture, I think that the branch is growing through the vertebra! Makes sense, since it has been hanging there for about 3 years.

Anyone else think that is neat?

A new program bird for RAPTOR (and for me)!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Name: Angel (SO 08-23)
Gender: Unknown
Height: 8 inches
Wingspan: 20 inches
Weight: 6 ounces
Date admitted: November 27, 2008
Age at arrival: Adult, unknown
Injury: Right wrist fracture, dislocation
Came from: Lynchburg, Ohio
Story: Found in yard, unable to fly
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We came up with the name Angel (Angelo, if it turns out to be a male...waiting on DNA test) because of a light-colored halo on the back of its head. This was reinforced by the bird's gentle nature, calm attitude and seamless transition from glove to carrier and back again. This may very well be the "perfect" program bird.
That said, screech owls are the "Great Pretenders". They mask pain and stress, and they are also very good at playing dead. Try to hand-feed one, and it may fall over in your hand with its mouth hanging open, hoping you will drop it and leave it alone. :)

My initial observation though is that this will be a good avian ambassador.

An interesting thing I have noticed in some field guides is the description of the different color morphs of screech owls. Most guides list three morphs: Red, gray and brown. Some guides ignore "brown" all together and just describe the red and gray. In my opinion, you could describe a hundred color morphs in screech owls...some are very red or very gray, sure. But there are plenty of screech owls who fall somewhere in between gray and brown, and brown and red.
This bird falls smack dab in the "brown" slot, but we have a rehab SO right now who could be a "red" or a "brown", depending on the way the light falls on it. Some are brown with reddish primaries...some grays are also full of brown....I could go on and on.

One thing that is pretty accurate: Northern screech owls are more likely to be gray and the Southern ones are more likely to be red.
Evolution fascinates me...northern woods are mostly dark hardwoods, while the southern forests are full of pines. Hardwood bark and cavities are...wait for it...brown/gray. The bark of a pine tree is reddish....coincidence? I think not.

A net would have come in handy

The girls have been little couch vegetables for days, so I took them out for a bit today.

We ended up at the dog park at Armleder (are we the only people who go to dog parks without our dogs?).

We met lots of nice dogs (and a few that needed more attention from their owners...why don't people who own dogs learn about dog behavior????).

This is Greta...a perfect copy of Nellie. (a few years younger, anyway)

Acted like Nellie, too. Didn't want to venture far from her person.

This is Plato. A great thinker.

(and an Anatolian Shepherd)

This was the friendliest Great Dane we have ever come across:

The angle is a bit off in this photo, but that dog was actually taller than Lorelei.

On the way home, I saw a small bundle of rufus feathers with ears, just off the road.
Damn. It looked like a screech owl.

I did a U-turn and parked on a skinny little shoulder. Trying to think three steps ahead
(I didn't have a box with me...so I had to think about getting one at the UDF down the road....grabbing my gloves....figuring out how to hold an injured screech owl and drive at the same time...), I approached it.

It swiveled its head around, and took off across the four-lane road.
Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap.....
Well, at least now I knew it could fly.

I got back in the car and swung around and parked again. It had landed behind a fence in some shrubbery. On private property.
Crapcrapcrapcrap.....

It kept retreating deeper and deeper into the woods, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to catch it. Trespassing while running after a flighted screech owl, with two kids in tow....I like gathering blogging material as much as the next person, but...


Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap....

Well, it can fly. Its eyes were uninjured. I assume it was stunned by a car and was gathering its wits when I came along.
All we can do is wish it the best and be hopeful.

When it retreated into the underbrush, a whole bunch of blue jays noticed it and started giving it what-for. It was funny, in a sad way.

Good luck, little buddy.

(The best shot I could get, as it scurried off.)
Maybe I will start carrying a net in my car?

"Houston, we have a pupa..."

(I was so proud of that title when I thought it up, I had to call Geoff and tell him about it)

Snookie is wrapped up in a sweet, surprisingly tiny chrysalis. I was surprised at how small it was...in pictures on other's blogs, etc, they look big, like the size of a bowl of a spoon...but it's less than 2 inches long. And you can't really call them cocoons, because they don't spin silk like moths do. Chrysalis or pupa.

I wanted to be there to videotape it turning into a pupa, but we were gone.
But you can bet your bippy I will be there to videotape the emergence!

You know other birds point and laugh.


And a totally different bird:


I found this juvenile male cardinal yesterday (with just a beginning of sheathed red feathers), weakly "chipping" near the fountain. I had my camera, so I got one quick pic, examined it to see if it was flighted (it wasn't) and took it in to get a box and to call Marilyn, one of our RAPTOR rehabbers who also treats songbirds.
The poor bird died in my hands in less than two minutes.



This is one of two emotions that owls have.
One is disgust, and the other one is this...startled.
News: Our gray screech owl has made a full recovery from her foot infection, and should be back at RAPTOR tomorrow! Yippee!
Now the red SO won't be publicly humiliated anymore. He can molt in peace. And by the way, I have seen "Molt" also spelled "Moult". They are both correct, right? English is stupid sometimes.

Okay, birders...someone please, please tell me I can put these on my life list...


Guinea fowl!
They were out in the middle of nowhere (no house anywhere near them), and ranging free. Someone tell me that this is a well-established introduced species that is now part of our avifauna.
What do you think? Listable?



News:
My Mom, the woman who didn't get an answering machine until the late 1990's, now has a freakin' lap top.


...With a wireless connection, which I connected for her, I might add.
She's entered the 21st century. I'll be dipped.
(Look at the fingers sticking up...I think she is afraid that it might blow up if she touches it too roughly.




Can't find the ID for this moth.
You'd think those "T" shapes would be easy to find in a guide.

Mom's wrenlets are big and fluffy and strong. At least a few baby bewds came from that nest box.

Tomorrow, I get to meet a fellow blogger. Trixie is in Cincinnati and we are going to meet up and let the kids play (so we can talk, hopefully), and I'm sure it will be bloggalicious.