Wings

The other evening Dave got the opportunity to do some flying!! One of his co-workers, Walt Clawson, built a couple planes in his basement and wanted to take Dave and a couple other co-workers, Scott and Brian, up for a flight. I said fine as Dave has good life insurance. (What, is that mean for me to say??) This is the 2 seater that they flew in.

Here are Scott and Walt checking out the one seater.


Hopefully all the assembly is DONE!!!

Getting ready for takeoff.


This is Walt and Brian getting all settled in. Now when I suggested that Dave take the camera along I thought that maybe I would get a lot of awesome flying shots to post? OK, so as far as I can tell he did not even take the camera up with him, as there are NO pictures from up above!! I also wondered why he didn't ask one of the other 3 to take a picture of him with or in the plane! Dave would like to thank Walt for a great night.



So now for the other wings I have to talk about. We now hear and see the owls numerous times everyday. this is Hootie making sure I keep my distance.

Just a few minutes after I took the last picture she went back into the nest box. Usually when you walk down the drive she is either sitting like this or in a tree very nearby.

Now before you scroll down.....the next shots are from inside the box from last year. Those who followed last year have seen these before , but if your new let me explain. It takes a lot of food to feed growing owlets. At this stage Hootie will forgo food for herself in favor of the babies. While she is sitting on the eggs she bulks up. As long as Blowfish is hunting she will cache food in the box. We woke up one morning to what I called carnage in the nest box. That night Blowfish must have been REALLY busy as we found 5 rabbits, and a chipmunk in the box. Most are headless as the owlets can't digest the skull bones at this stage. So you have been warned.

We wondered at this point how the heck she could maneuver around the box with all this and 2 owlets. We were also happy at this point that it is a black and white camera. I thought you might like to know how big she is: she is about 22 inches high, with a 48" wingspan and weighs about 3 lbs. They are very light weight as they have hollow bones.

This is Ike or Percy last year in the box. They would peck around at leftovers in the box and sometimes get lucky enough to get a small piece. At this stage their beaks are not strong enough to get pieces themselves. The cache of food lasted maybe 3 days that time. She would sometimes bury them under the wood chips for later feedings.

Hootie picks apart smaller pieces for the owlets. Now I want you to know there were a few times the pieces didn't seem that small to me and we worried watching them as they ate. Sometimes we would get ourselves all worked up and then remember this is nature and it happens all the time, we just don't see it.

The owlets playing together. They will pick and preen one another.

Just a video of one of the owlets finding the balance.



This is one of Hootie sitting in the same tree as the day earlier. She has been sunning herself in this spot the last couple of days. I think this day she sat for an hour, preening, scratching, hooting and sleeping. The blue jays you hear were dive bombing her. I had hoped to get a shot of that but, no. It amazes me that she can sit there and tolerate them.

Anyone who would like to e-mail Dave and encourage him to PLUG in the DVD player feel free to do so. Now you may ask why I just don't do it myself!!???!!??? Let me just say if you could see the jumble of cords for the antenna ( yes we live in the stone age) converter box, DVD player, box camera, and various cord for watching the regular camera on the tube you would understand!!!