Neighborwhos

UPDATE:  Juvenile in the open this afternoon.  You can tell (s)he's a youngster because of the fuzz and lack of adult plumage.

  The whole purpose of having a degree in photography, accumulating the expensive equipment, establishing a business and honing your skills over long years of practice is so that when the neighbor calls you can go over and take some snaps of the baby owls.  

  This morning when one of the neighbors took the morning paper up to our retired friends house she ran into a screech owl sitting in the neighbors climbing roses.  We've followed the owls for years watching for them in their favorite nesting holes and trees.  I think the retirees and their henchmen have some secret owl-worshiping cult going on.  This particular owl family likes the mailbox flap left UP so that the box under the porch light accumulates June Bugs by the handful- then they take turns filling up.  This morning there were three juveniles and two adults up in the Cherry Laurel thicket between the houses.  There are two native variants- grey and red.  These are the grey.

  I haven't tried a June Bug.  They must be good.

  Great little birds.  They were here before the Caddo or anyone else made a home in the Blackfork Creek watershed.