Skip to main content

Another visitor

 


We had a Great Horned Owl visit this week. He chose a tree in our backyard and spent about 5 hours there.
One of our Abert squirrels found him to be interesting enough to require a little further inspection.

The crows were next. I was surprised that it took them a long time to see him.

The crows only stayed for about 15 minutes harassing him. Normally they continue their barrage of sound and flybys until he flies away but this time they just gave up.
I love the way owls seem to have a stoic attitude toward the crows, just sitting there and refusing to acknowledge them. He did however show some interest in the squirrel probably because they are normally on his menu.
This owl (or his ancestors) has been in our neighborhood for years. We can hear his calls in the morning 2 to 4 times a week.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amadinda

  The Amadinda is an African xylophone originally made from slabs of wood or even large sticks, with or without gourds for resonators. There was no reason for this project other than to see if I could make a simple mallet instrument. The box was made from plywood (which also acted as the resonators) and the bars were made from maple.  Since this was to be a true xylophone, the bars were all of equal width. Tuning was done by cutting the bars to different lengths and removing material from the bottom. Using a router I created a sort of 'stepped pyramid' instead of the traditional arc cut found on marimba or xylophone bars.  Cutting the underside is not only for tuning but it focuses the pitch and creates the characteristic overtones of the instrument. Since I wanted to play this with other 'Western' instruments, I chose to use a pentatonic scale of 2 2/5 octaves (C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#). Two people sit on either side of the instrument and strike the ends of