The other morning while Tovina and I were having breakfast, Michael noticed something in the tree outside my office window. He grabbed the camera and got a closer look.
Our raccoons are back. Two of them this time. Not content with having a staring contest from inside the house, Michael went outside and videoed them while standing about 4 feet away. Watch the video below to see them make their escape.
Given the way these critters ran away, I guess they are also camera shy or maybe they just didn't want to be ID'd by the police.
Forgot to mention we had another guest at our house.
Michael found him on the lane in front of our house. He's an Eastern box turtle (and by he I mean the turtle). The red eyes let us know that he is a he (again, talking about the turtle here). We (this time referring to Michael and me and maybe even T though she somehow missed the entire Mr. Turtle episode) were hoping we could add him to our pond but it turns out that box turtles can't live in ponds so we (see previous note) have put that plan on hold.
While sitting at my desk this morning, Fritz and Edgar (our 2 baby owls from a couple weeks ago) chose to visit just outside the window that I look out while sitting at my computer. They look bigger now and sometimes we can see them flying around with lunch in their talons.
We also have some baby deer that come by. They seemed to be about the size of large dogs just earlier this week though they are growing fast.
And the hundred or so tadpoles in the pond are thinking about growing some legs.
To answer the questions: Yes, the owls seems just fine. We seem to come across about 1 a day somewhere in the yard. Its hard to tell who is who (hooo?) but here is one of them hanging out near the house.
Might be Edgar but its sort of hard to tell since he won't answer to his name.
As an interesting side note, one of the folks I've met recently is participating in a 24 hour birdathon competition and is going to come by and try for a look at our owls to help their team score. Pretty exciting stuff :)
More info: Annual Birdathon at Rowe Woods Teams of birders will scour the land to search for as many species of birds as possible during this 24-hour period. Last year, at this fundraising event for CNC and Oxbow Inc., the CNC team found nearly 125 species in Clermont County alone!
This actually happened Wednesday night, but there was just so much to tell that I wanted to hold everyone in suspense for another day. (Though some people - and I mean you Mom - looked ahead in the videos so they already know how this went down - which was very well in case you can't handle the suspense of waiting to the end of the blog.)
To catch everyone up, Fritz was taken for a check up on Tuesday. Edgar came a-calling on Wednesday morning. And Fritz came home Wednesday night.
We got a call from RAPTORS, Inc that Fritz seemed fine and they would be returning her to us at dusk. Our first point of discussion was, 'you mean Fritz is a girl?'
Yup, turns out the female great horned owls (GHO) are bigger than the males and Fritz was already the size of some full grown males; big, beautiful bird that she is! Also turns out that GHO parents have been known to stuff one baby more than the other (often clutches of 2 though they may have more.) So, while Fritz is bigger than Edgar, since Edgar can fly he is likely a little (maybe a couple of days) older. Fritz might also have been having trouble flying because she is so big.
But all of this is nothing to worry about. GHO babies often come down from the nest before they are ready to fly and the parents will simply feed them on the ground.
So..... where does this leave us? With one great big raptor that needs to be put back in a tree of course! And how does one do that? By giving him to the man eagerly asking questions and wearing welding gloves!
The RAPTOR volunteer transferred Fritz to Michael in preparation for Fritz's release. Michael was THRILLED (to put it mildly.)
Raptor Inc did loan Michael a spiffy pair of somewhat longer gloves to replace the welding/cooking gloves that he had on before they arrived.
The kids also thought this whole thing was pretty cool. Emma and Brendan were wondering if they could pet Fritz. (The answer was 'no' in case you were wondering.) Tovina kept saying 'bay-ee ohww' (baby owl) and 'hooo hoooo'. So there was really something for everyone.
And here is Michael releasing Fritz into the wild... whether she wants to go or not.
The hope that Fritz would climb up the tree the way Edgar was able to, but she didn't seem to be in the mood for such antics and decided to hop down out of the tree and waddle off into the woods. We got to watch the Duchess flying around with dinner in her talons (squirrel tartare), and Edgar stuck around and watched everything unfold. The Duke was nowhere to be seen, though he was probably in the area.
And just in case you haven't figured it out by now, you can see more pictures at Owl and a longer video on YouTube
At around 9:40am Michael heard a rap-tap-tapping, tapping at the door. Turns out Fritz has a sibling, Edgar, who wanted to know where we hid Fritz. That's right, there was a baby owl knocking on our front door this morning with his beak. What exactly is the proper etiquette regarding opening your home to a strange baby owl? We called the RAPTOR, Inc. folks back to try to get an answer to this perplexing question. They told us that owls at this age are like an inquisitive 2 year old, so there was nothing really strange about his behavior he was just checking out everything in his environment - much like Tovina who really wanted to follow Fritz into the woods last night. As best we could make out, what Edgar was really thinking was, "Hello. My name is Edgar Montoya. You took my brother. Prepare to die." The fog at the bottom of the window is from Edgar breathing. Edgar seems somewhat smaller than Fritz, though we don't have a side-by-side comparison. Either way, its still shocking that this bird is only about 2 months old. This is Edgar looking all nonchalant on Sheila's car. (The bumper got a little scratched but it doesn't look too serious.) After we had duly noted what a good brother Edgar was for coming by to check on Fritz, he took off back towards the woods, first stopping at the green electric box in the yard, and then up into a dogwood tree. Apparently Edgar can fly - not well - but that's still pretty good, especially since Fritz couldn't get off the ground. Edgar also has a pretty back which he wanted to make sure we noticed. Here he is up about 10 feet in a tree.
Check back tomorrow for Part 3: The Return of Fritz
This evening was much more interesting than any of us expected. Danny and Brendan were coming over to play for a while. But upon arrival, instead of leaping out of the car in their normal style, we instead got a call from the driveway. Why? Cause there was this owl hopping around on the lawn and Dan was afraid that getting out of the car might scare it away. As it turned out, the owl could not fly, so while it did waddle away, it did not get far.
Here you might be able to see it crouched down in the middle of the pic trying to pretend its invisible. Couldn't quite make it out? Well then, here's a close up for you. So what does one do with an owl that seems unable to fly? Call RAPTOR, Inc of course! Luckily Sheila found some numbers and kept calling until she found a very helpful lady who asked us a bunch of questions we didn't know the answers to. Among them: Q - Does it have feathers or does it look more furry (adult or baby) A - Feathers. Its an adult (10 minutes later) A - Never mind, its all kinds of furry.
After the very nice man from RAPTORS, Inc arrived, we learned that we had a baby Great Horned Owl who was likely under 2 months old. Here is one of many close-ups of Fritz
The volunteer checked Fritz out before taking him away and couldn't see anything immediately wrong with him but was going to get him looked at more carefully anyway. After Fritz gets a clean bill of health then he will be brought back to our yard and put back in his nest. With some luck, there will be more pictures.
Duchess (momma) watched the entire proceedings and was not impressed. We could hear her hissing? barking? some sort of clearly aggressive get-away-from-my-baby sound through much of the proceedings.
You can see more pictures at Owl And a longer video on YouTube
Things to notice in the video. The crows that are going non-stop in the background? They had been harassing the owls since 9am. Apparently crows with flock from miles to attack baby owls of this kind. That might have something to do with the adult owls taking over crows' nests rather than building their own. Or it might be related to the fact that these owls eat crows. Whatever the cause, at 7pm the crows were still circling, cawing, and making a general pest of themselves with regard to the owls. It seems likely that if Fritz had not been taken away, he would have been killed by the crows. The loud clicking noise? That is Fritz clacking his beak and telling us he is very dangerous and we should back away. However, before he was actually picked up, Fritz did everything in his power to back away from us while looking intimidating. He even puffed all his feathers, arched is back, and raised his wings along his back to look bigger. Hard to believe a bird that big is still so young and has lots of growing left to do.
After Tovina finished changing her bear the other night, she then threw it into her crib/pak'n'play and proceeded to read it bedtime stories. You can see her starting off with Good Night Gorilla in this first picture. She seemed to be concerned that the bear not suffer from lack of pre-nap reading so she then proceeded to read at least 2 more books. I have a bunch of them on video but they are a little shaky as I kept starting to laugh. Below is the video from Moo Baa Lalala, another classic. To help you out, captions have been added to the video. Lines from the book are marked with 'text' (my comments are enclosed thusly) In many cases Tovina will sign (with her own special 19 month old accent) while speaking and I have tried to point out when this is happening.
There was some impressive snow fall the last few days followed by some even more impressive ice which was then followed by more snow. This made the trees around the house look just gorgeous, even if they are weighed down so much that many are actually bent till they are touching the ground. This also makes the deer particularly easy to spot. This is nice since they have been frolicking in the snow. I thought I had seen deer frolicking before but I was wrong. Deer can't really properly frolic unless snow is involved.
(Bonus question: Why is frolic with just a 'c' and frolicking with a 'ck'?)
One of the fun things about winter and all the leaves falling off the trees is that it is much easier to see the deer. While we usually just see them in their family groups of 4 or 5, sometimes we get a lone buck walking through, as you can see here. Other times we seem to get all the deer in the area to come through at once as a group of around 14. Its hard to get an exact count as games of tag which require loops through the yard and around the house make the deer very hard to accurately count. Here is a video of one of the deer showing what she thinks of our neighbor's fence.
Apparently Edgar can fly - not well - but that's still pretty good, especially since Fritz couldn't get off the ground.
Here he is up about 10 feet in a tree.
After Tovina finished changing her bear the other night, she then threw it into her crib/pak'n'play and proceeded to read it bedtime stories. You can 
see her starting off with Good Night Gorilla in this first picture.
fall the last few days followed by some even more impressive ice which was then followed by more snow. This made the trees around the house look just gorgeous, even if they are weighed down so much that many are actually bent till they are touching the ground.
One of the fun things about winter and all the leaves falling off the trees is that it is much easier to see the deer. While we usually just see them in their family groups of 4 or 5, sometimes we get a lone buck walking through, as you can see here. Other times we seem to get all the deer in the area to come through at once as a group of around 14. Its hard to get an exact count as games of tag which require loops through the yard and around the house make the deer very hard to accurately count.
