I finally got a hold of the male great horned owl. At least I'm assuming that this is the male and the one sitting on the nest all this time is the female, but it's also possible that they take turns incubating.
He's looking at my dog. In the sequence of photos, you can see him tracking her with his eyes as she walks by on the ground, completely oblivious to impending doom from above.
Can a three-pound bird eat a 22-lb dog? Somehow I doubt it. There was a news item this week wherein a poodle was allegedly snatched up and carried aloft by an eagle which then dropped it on the lawn of a senior citizens' facility. Not that I don't trust the CBC and all, but I'd like to see an eagle carrying a poodle with my own eyes before I believe it, because eagles and owls always keep a beady eye on my dog, but they've never once made any attempt to carry her away. And a poodle, even a toy poodle, isn't any smaller than a shiba. And I saw a great horned owl scare a harrier away from a rabbit it had just killed once, but neither of them tried to fly away with the rabbit; they just ate it where it lay. In fact, in my Planet Earth DVDs, there is an eagle that kills a crane, and then the crane is so heavy the eagle falls like a stone and can barely regain control. And a crane weighs 1/3 as much as my dog.
Because people in Hay River like any reason to create a big drama over nothing, I've heard people say that they're keeping their dogs inside so the owls won't eat them. But seriously, owls eat mostly mice and voles. I'm sure they could grab a puppy of a smaller breed, but I really doubt they'd attack an adult dog, even a small one.
Anyway. The other thing I like in this picture is that huge white marking on his chest. I have no other great horned owl with this much white, so that will make him easy to identify if he comes back in future years. Unless of course he passes it on to his babies.
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