Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Screech Owls



Screech owls are so cool. They are the smallest of Illinois owls, measuring 8-9 inches in length. They have yellow eyes and prominent ear tufts which are not ears at all, just simply elongated feathers. There are 2 morphs, red and gray. They tend to adapt their colors to their environment as represented here with the tree bark for camouflage. Their large eyes are fixed in the skull, making it necessary to rotate their heads to change their view. They nest in tree cavities, or even nesting boxes if necessary. The Screech Owl got its name from the call that they make, usually at dusk. They also have a low whistling call, sometimes sounding like a horse whinny. They eat a diet of small rodents, insects, snakes, and sometimes other birds.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

?ffuts golb siht dnatsrendu t'nod I

Peggy said...

!yrros

Anonymous said...

As I was saying before I was so rudely interupted that your owl should work at hooters your deer is dear your bee is in the eye of the beholder. This blog stuff can be fun if you know what to say, but in my case I don't and besides typing a blog is very difficult when you are trying to eat lunch put on your make up reading a newspaper in rush hour traffic so I will just say LOOK OUT gotta go bye-bye see you later...

Anonymous said...

Didn't we just spray for weirdos? Oh well...

The Bald Eagle is off the endangered list today! Yea!

From 400 nesting pairs to over 10,000. Still protected, but not endangered.

You should do an Eagle tribute with all them eagle picture you got, Hanni.

Peggy said...

Welcome Ms. Goodwrench! Thanks for reminding me about the Eagles. Its such a wonderful thing for them to come off that list! I'll see what I can find for the Eagle tribute...and yeah, I'm having a weirdo infestation problem, I'm going out now to buy some Industrial Strength Weird-Off!