Owls: The day after

Last night's owl escapade was pretty exciting. But it in no way prepared us for this morning.

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

Once again, you can see more pictures at Owl

Great Horned Owls

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.

By the way, Duchess was HUGE!

Another shot of Fritz

And a picture trying to show Fritz's wingspan.


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.


And here I thought the deer were cool!

Little late

Well, its late and I am trying to clean up my computer while prepping for a phone interview and dealing with some sad news.
So, let me share just a quick pic of mz T

Shabbat clothes

With the glorious warm weather that has finally arrived I have been enjoying dressing T up in some of the outfits that would have proved a bit chilly before now.

Standing still was not an easy task that morning but you can see how sophisticated our little girl looked!

She and Michael fed the fish before we left for services. (Yes we keep our fish food in an old yogurt container.) Tovina's aim is not always the best but luckily Daddy was there to make sure the fish got something to eat.


Of course, I also learned that you can dress her up....

but you can't always take her out.
Where's your belly?

Balloons!

This last week when grocery shopping, Tovina was treated to a helium balloon by the store.

She was thrilled!
She was thrilled in the car when she bounced it around,
and when it floated out of reach
She was thrilled when it was in the house
and she let it slowly release
She was thrilled as Daddy caught it
just before a ladder was needed
and she was FURIOUS when the balloon's string was then tied to various items, including her own wrist, in an effort to keep it away from the vaulted ceilings.
SO MAD!!!

She earned herself a nap she was so distraught.

After the nap a longer string was tied to the first string and a weight to the new end which seemed to alleviate the worst of whatever horrible thing she imagined we were doing to confine her poor poor balloon.
This eventually led to the following video. A longer version is here.

All better!

Oh, and the screeching? That's a new treat too.

Banana please

Tovina demonstrating her speaking skills.. and how she sticks out her tongue

On the dial up

Tovina was given a toy kitchen by one of our neighbors. Included on this deluxe set is some sort of obsolete rotary device... which T recognizes as a phone. The kicker is, while she will rotate the dial, she also tries to push 'buttons' on the mouthpiece of the phone - clearly a holdout from her days of cell phone usage.

Tag with Zaida

There are a couple more videos of this game
Here is the wind-up and her are a couple more run-throughs

Shabbat in the park

Today we took advantage of a simply gorgeous day to walk over to a park near our house. Having done it once, we may now be addicted and plan on coming back many, many, many more times. Today we also learned that Tovina LOVES swinging.


Turns out Daddy is a pretty big fan too.

We also got to throw a disk around some which made me happy - so you could say it was a good day for the family all around.
We topped off the time at the park with a lovely stroll home.

Bye bye

It had to happen, but it is still sad... all the grandparents went home. They actually did this a few days ago but I have been dragging out pictures in the hopes of ignoring the obvious. I would have liked to share a nice photo of T with her 3 grandparents, but while they pretended to cooporate, the photo is pretty much flattering to no one. Instead I preset you with these highlights.

While T is not in this shot, she had place the hat on Grandpop's head and was very amused by the results. Luckily, he was too :)

Here is a short clip and T and Zaida going through the alphabet. D is for Drums! You can check out longer versions on YouTube.

And here are Baba and T having a read of flash cards together.



So... What does T think of having to wave bye bye to Grandpop, Baba, and Zaida?