Our Neighbour

This is our resident barred owl.  Not terribly concerned about humans apparently. She can be seen afternoons and evenings in the spring and summer perched near one of the ponds waiting for salamanders to surface.  Sometimes you can hear her young fuzzy ones hissing hungily, deeper in the woods.  The behbehs are harder to spot and very difficult to photograph.  There are usually two behbehs waiting for their poor overworked mom to feed them.  Often the mother is set upon by chipping birds who dive at her on her perch, sometimes literally colliding with her in a vain attempt to scare her away. Squawking crows then often join in on the harassment. If she swoops down and catches something, the crows will chase her and try to steal her prey. The crows and chipping birds often alert us of the owl's presence.

One evening I heard an awful desperate squawking which abruptly ended after a few seconds. It was disturbing because I was not able to identify what creature was making the sounds. On Katie's walk that evening we discovered the grizzly explanation. Exactly centred between the two large hollow cedar stumps that straddle the driveway, near the bridge, we came across a freshly severed crow's head. Well, the beak and half the head, still wet with scarlet blood droplets.

I guess she had had enough.  We have not heard the crows squawking after her since.

Creeeepy.