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

La Caverna del oro

 One of our first backpacking trips in Colorado was in the Sangre de Christo Mountains. One mountain in particular drew our attention. Marble Mountain was the location of a famous story of a Spanish cave of gold. There are many places on the web that tell this story better than I could, suffice it to say that we wanted to locate it and see the iconic 'Maltese Cross' located at it's entrance.  In 1974 after I got out of the Army we invited some friends to join us on this trip. We parked our car at the trailhead in the Wet Mountain Valley and backpacked up Marble Mountain to 12,000 feet. In one of the culverts we found the entrance to the cave. Maltese Cross at the Caverna del oro It turned out to be a real thing. The large red cross was still visible after 400 yrs. According to legend the Spanish put it there in the 1600's. I did have the courage to crawl into it but only a few feet. After about 10 feet there is a vertical shaft that drops about 750 feet!  The Cross is v...
3 comments
Read more

The Deagan Project: Part II

Escutcheon Pins, Washers and Isolators Most of the pins were bent but easily straightened. Just tapping them on a bench vise did the job. I replaced the one wood screw with a sheet metal screw for the lost pin. For the washers I used silicon caulking compound. Earlier this year I tried making sheets of silicon by applying caulk onto a plastic sheet protector. I placed another sheet on top and rolled it out to the desired thickness. After it cured I took a hole punch for the outside diameter of the size that I needed. The smallest punch was used for the center hole for the pin. In the past I used catheter material for the isolators but when I went to a medical supply store to find the size that I needed I was asked for my doctor's prescription. A prescription?.....Are they afraid that I'm going to insert a piece of plastic into parts of my body just for the...….never mind. OK, so nix the catheter tubes. Since I was working with silicon I tried a di...
1 comment
Read more

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 ...
3 comments
Read more