Great Horned Owl on Motion Camera

Many regular readers will know that we have a motion activated camera on a dead deer out at work. We've seen crows, bald eagles, raccoons, and coyotes each eating their share. When we looked at last night's photos though, we found a wonderful surprise. A Great Horned Owl!

The owl hung around for quite a while (on and off over the course of 5 hours!) so there were lots of photos. I compiled them into a short video.





Here are a few stills. This one is one of my favorites. The owl is really working hard to get a meal.

The shot below is actually then last of the video. Why is it the last one? Look carefully and you can see the owl finally flying away.



It pays to look a little closer though. I enlarged the section with the owl and you can see it is flying off with the deer's leg!


We've heard Great Horned Owls at work but very rarely see them. The deer is situated in some pretty good Great Horned Owl habitat though. Great Horned Owls are a species of the forest edge and the deer is about 10 feet from the edge of the forest.

Special thanks to naturalist Paul Smithson who's been checking on the camera's lately!

~Kirk

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