Afton - Owl Finders Edition

After my prior post on Afton and hunting for owls I decided Sunday the 21st was a free day. The weather had shifted leaving the day warm and without any rain/snow looking to come down. I slept in after my 9 hours of driving and 5 hours of hiking the day prior, but still got to Afton about 11:30AM.

My plan was to return to a couple spots previously searched with plenty of owl sign. I began working a grove again finding good signs of owls. Below is a picture showing a couple groups of pellets from an owl, likely a small one considering the size of the pellets.

The pellets shown were found under a pine tree and on close examination showed bones and hair from mice in them. Judging by the size they likely came from a Northern Saw-whet, but I'm a newb on such things I can't say that for certain.

Encouraged further by the pellet finds I slowly worked the tree grove looking for white-wash and then visually looking up the tree to the highest reaches possible. I did this for well over an hour just silently staring at pine trees and looking them over for anything aberrant. Eventually I found the below image presented to me that at range looked like a pine cone 30 feet in the air.

Yes, an owl is in this picture. I was zoomed a little bit, but this shows roughly what I first saw when I looked up this tree. The darkish lump left of the trunk just above center on the image is the owl.

Looking a bit closer with my Nikon P900 super zoom though I saw feathers. This Northern Saw-whet Owl was hiding as high as possible and relatively oblivious to my existence as a bird could get at this point. In fact while working for another angle I never saw the bird even both to lift it's head up and take a look at me except when a crow flew over the grove making a general racket. Beyond that this bird was content to while away the day high up in the branches nearly invisible to the world.

With all of my 83X zoom I was able to see the feathers on the back of the bird huddled tight to the trunk of the tree.

Moving around the tree I was at least able to see some of the belly color on this very sleepy predator. It was pretty fun finding one especially considering the height and how well it blended in with the tree. I can feel the skillset expanding and gaining more confidence in finding these elusive birds. 

It was a great add to the big year bird list and one that felt extra sweet as a return visit to a site that produced no finds just a days earlier. Owl hunting is super challenging and has required me to change my methods to adapt to the problem at hand.

It is also worth noting I was able to add Cedar Waxwing and Ring-necked Pheasant to my State Park year list while hiking other portions of the park. It was a great day and another roughly 3 miles of trail time for me.