Rusty's persistence has paid off! Every night once or twice Rusty flies over to Iris' perch by the hatch and does some low, sexy hoots. Iris always meets him with hisses. And when he isn't hooting to her, he offers her food, which she often has refused. Of course it might help if Rusty offered the food BEFORE Iris had her own supper....
At any rate, just after 2 AM this morning Rusty tried his best hoots on Iris. Although she hissed, he hopped over on top of her and apparently copulated! Woo-hoo!
Maybe there's hope for a Valentine's Day egg....
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.
Since I know that you are interested in owl vocalizations, I wondered if you heard the very melodic twittering tonight. The cam was offline ( sometime after 9pm) so I couldn't see who was singing. Maybe Iris- way too high for the manly Rusty - or a canary! MapleOwl
ReplyDeleteIris and Rusty both do the high pitched twittering or chitters. Depending on the context they can be nice sounding or agitated sounding. If I heard them, I just considered them appropriate for the context and didn't make a special note of them.
ReplyDeleteBoth were next to each other on the far perch, and Iris was chittering. But could not make out if he fed her, or what.
ReplyDelete7:35PM Central time
Good catch! Rusty tried to feed Iris but she refused, since she had already eaten. If you listen very closely when he tries to feed her you'll hear him make soft little grunty sounds.
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