Alice the Great Horned Owl is a permanently injured owl who works at the Houston Nature Center in Houston, MN and lives with her handler, Karla Bloem. Rusty and Iris are Great Horned Owls that are both blind in their right eyes and cannot live in the wild. Rusty and Iris are breeding in captivity as part of Karla's vocal study on Great Horned Owls. All together they have led to the creation of an International Owl Center in Houston, MN and an International Festival of Owls.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Owlets Playing
The owlets seem to be at an age where they are primed to play...especially together. They were running around on the floor, seemingly looking for trouble, so I put some toys into their aviary. They include a fake lemming, a fake mouse wrapped with colored rope, a little stuffed moose, a big stuffed bear/dog thing, a giggle ball that laughs when jarred, a leather glove, and maybe one or two other things.
The owlets seem to like to play at dawn and dusk, and this is a lengthy video that shows you some of their play behavior. They are learning to pounce and drag things, and probably even caching.
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Thanks for this. I have seen my wild owlets doing similar things at this stage in previous years. Have they taken any food items off the tray yet? The parent owls in Cardston start dropping food on roofs and the ground at a certain point rather than delivering it to the owlets so the owlets have to fly down and pick it up themselves. once i saw the the mother owl deliver a live mouse(I don't know if this was accidental) so that the two owlets had to chase it around until one of them caught and killed it. Other than this the parents don't really seem to teach the owlets other then letting them tag along as they go hunting once they have mastered flying.
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