Tale of the Barred

We have been on a birding frenzy lately exploring areas of Ohio that we’ve never been to before.  We owe much of our spots to fellow birding friends and an app called eBird and Merlin bird ID. But there is a tale that goes with this owl.  A birder told another birder who told me where to find some particular ducks in one of the local parks and that was the plan for the day.  Find the park (hooray for GPS), go to one particular parking lot, cross the main road, turn right, head for the white sawhorse, go up that path past the line of trees, keep walking for almost a mile and there would be the pond with these particular ducks and I don’t mean Mallards.

That trek was an adventure all by itself!

But before we left the parking lot a couple on their morning walk came up to us and asked what were we photographing? After telling them it was birds, they asked had we seen the owl? Owl?!? So we followed them along one of the many walking trails in the park (which we would never have done otherwise) until there it was;  just sitting there in clear view watching people go by.

My first in the wild owl!

It let us get very close without flying off or even remotely making any warning moves but I was ever cognizant of not being loud, sounding like a mouse or threatening because they have some serious beaks and claws and I did not want it angry at me.  Even when a group of high school girls came running by on their school track team practice it didn’t move more than fluffing it’s feathers a bit.  Cool owl…

Teri 📷