Owl Chatters Coming to the International Festival of Owls

Rusty and Iris have been snuggling up together lately, and Iris is losing belly feathers. All looks good for breeding!

Several of the Rusty and Iris cam watchers (and other cam watchers) are planning to attend the 10th Annual International Festival of Owls in Houston, Minnesota March 2-4, 2012. They'll get a chance to meet Tracy Eccles, host of the Pot Plant Owl cam in South Africa, and Carlos and Donna Royal, hosts of the Molly & McGee Barn Owl cam from San Marcos, California, among other great guests like Denver Holt of the Owl Research Institute in Montana and Prof. Dr. Michael Wink, owl DNA geneticist extraordinaire.

I know many chatters would like to know which other chatters are coming to the Festival. So feel free to leave a comment here with your chat name (not email) and also on the Festival's Facebook page. Then head over to a page with Rusty and Iris's chat on it, log in, find the other chatters coming, and send them a PM (personal message).

As of this writing I know of folks coming from California, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Alice Lays Her Egg for 2012

Alice has been acting "eggy" since Thursday. My first clue was that she didn't eat anything Wednesday night. The second clue was that she was in her nest basket when it was time to leave to do a program and she flat out refused to get out of the nest. She stepped over my hand a bunch of times, bit me A LOT, and just simply wouldn't cooperate. She's acted this way before when close to egg laying, and when I made her go to work anyway she was absolutely miserable, not sleeping, standing on both feet all day, trying to jump off her perch, and all but running to her nest when we got home.

She didn't eat Thursday night. She didn't eat Friday night either, and as Hein said, she was hooting differently. It was more subdued and quiet, and she was sitting with her back arched slightly. About 1 AM on Saturday I heard her jump up to her nest basket. She never goes to her nest basket at night...she's too busy looking out the windows. So I expected an egg to arrive at any time.

She was sitting in her nest when I got up in the morning. I reached a hand under her to check for an egg, but didn't find one...I just got bitten. She wasn't flat out in incubation posture...she was more in a squatty posture...so I wasn't expecting to see one.

I checked again when I got home from work. She kind of looked miserable and squatty, and again bit me good an proper when I felt for an egg.

When she doesn't eat she needs to drink water, and I hadn't noticed her drinking, so I offered her a drink from a squirt bottle. She wasn't interested. So I just left her alone.

When I went to bed at about 10 PM she was down flat, and yes, there was an egg! I'm curious to see if she'll lay a second egg. She has yet to lay two eggs in one year. But the interesting thing about her egg laying this year is that she never allowed me to "copulate" with her by putting my hand on her back, which is something she's wanted in past years. Guess she doesn't need me to help her make an egg....

Iris Squawks

We always think of Great Horned Owls hooting. But they actually do several types of hoots, a variety of chitters, and on occasion, some different kinds of squawks.

I have a fairly good handle on what most of the hoots and chitters mean, but the squawks leave me a bit clueless. They are quite uncommon, which makes it even more difficult to figure out what they mean.

The other evening while I was sitting in front of the computer Iris started squawking. COOL! And it wasn't a single or double squawk...it was a 3-4 noter, repeatedly! (See video)

Interestingly, not long after Iris started squawking, a wild female started hooting just outside the cages. It wasn't Virginia, the resident wild female, or Scarlett Owl Hara, the female that tried for months to steal Rusty away from Iris. After reviewing spectrograms of the hoots, I think it was Jezebelle, a female who was here for a few days in August flirting with Rusty and trying to attack Iris. She's the one who hurt her eye slamming into the window where Alice was.

Talk about exciting...hearing Iris squawk AND this other female here!

Now the real question is: Did Iris know Jezebelle was out there before she started squawking, or did Jezebelle hear Iris and come over and hoot? We can only speculate.

But Iris did some multi-squawks again at about 10 PM last night (thanks to a viewer for catching that!) She was sitting on a perch in the flight cage next to Rusty. Nothing was going on. No other owls hooted. I couldn't come up with any reason she was doing it.

At any rate, please post a comment here if you hear any squawking so we can eventually figure out what it means.