By The Pond

 

I guess I really never thought much about this until this morning. We have a lot of owls around our property, which I think is good. However, this morning I noticed a very large Barred Owl, I'd say about 18 inches or so in height, sitting on a wing of a fountain fairy (spouts water into our pond when temps are not freezing) looking for something. I went to take a photo and it flew into a nearby tree, still keeping an eye on something. That something turned out to be a small squirrel. *This* is the part that I really hadn't thought much about before, the squirrel was about to become a part of the owl's diet. We also have a lot of squirrels (who doesn’t) around the pond and have a bird feeder too which attracts them. No birds were in sight due to the owl's presence. It just never really occurred to me that owls eat squirrels too. Mice and other small rodents, but it never clicked that if the owl was of a larger variety it also gnaws on a little larger animals like fox, Opossums, and squirrels. We hear them in the night hooting away outside, I love listening to them, don't see them then though. I have never really seen them hunt in the daylight, actually I thought they reserved that behavior for the evening hours. Guess it all depends on how hungry they are, this one was definitely hunting in the day. I was then looking for the movie camera and caught a tiny bit of footage of the owl sitting in the tree looking around, but suddenly he took off. I missed it with the camera of course, it all happened to fast, so I am unclear whether the owl actually ended up with the squirrel or not. Not a very smart little squirrel to be the only creature at the pond with a big owl looming over head, I must say. The owl suddenly swooped out of the view finder and then both owl and squirrel were gone.