Nothing too terribly exciting going on in Alice's world right now (that I'm aware of anyway.) We've been hooting some each evening, and she still checks out both her nest box and her next basket. I've given her food (leftovers) when she's been in her basket and her box, and she'll take it from me. (She doesn't normally take food from my fingers otherwise.)
I try to encourage her a little bit to use the basket, since it's roomier and she fits better in it. So sometimes when we hoot I will purposely go over and stand next to her basket. This spot also happens to be right next to one of her perches. Twice now she has flown over to the perch, walked over to me, preened my head a bit and then my ear, winding up hooting while my ear was in her bill. It comes out more like "Ha, ha, ha-ha-ha, ha" with her bill open like that instead of the normal "hoos." (She normally has her bill shut completely when she hoots.) And it's a lot louder from my perspective!
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.
