[NatureNS] Daytime visit to our owl survey route

very careful, since, accoarding to Bernard Forsythe, robins are very
frequent prey of barred owls! Cheers from Jim
----------
From: Bob McDonald <bobathome@hfx.eastlink.ca>
Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 21:00:26 -0300
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca

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Good evening,

This afternoon, Suzanne Borkowski and I scouted out and re-flagged my owl
route in the Pockwock watershed.....

....the high-light of the afternoon had to be a male Ruffed Grouse in
FULL DISPLAY mode!!  What a sight!  The illustration in Peterson came no
where near to doing "our" bird justice.  We first saw it in the middle of
the road about 100 m ahead.  We stopped immediately and checked it out
through binoculars.  Once we had figured out its identity, it ambled slowly
off the road and we moved forward to where it disappeared from view and
Suzanne turned off the engine.  Within a few seconds, we noticed it again
moving slowly through the saplings at the side of the road.  Apart from the
fully fanned out tail, the ruff around the neck was fully extended such that
the head was barely visible.  Every few seconds it shook its head and the
ruff feathers magnified every move.  This bird did everything but go into
the drumming mode.  We never did see the female but there must have been one
around; certainly this male would have been very hard for a female to
resist.  The best illustration that we could find is on page 61 of the 5th
edition of the Nat Geog field guide.  In 33 years of birding in Canada, I
had never seen this display before - it really gave new meaning to the name
RUFFED GROUSE!!

Yesterday while doing some geocaching in Oakfield PP, an owl gave 2 long
quavering calls in mid-afternoon.  The bird was easy to find since it was
being mobbed by a very vocal and upset Robin.  It turned out to be a Barred
Owl - only one was seen.

Cheers,

Bob McDonald
Halifax 

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