When Sue discovered the brownish, yellow-eyed owl, it was between the wall and the chest of drawers on which the bird cage rests, but then flew out the door and perched on their balcony railing long enough to snap a few photos. Don estimated it to be about six to eight inches in height. "There was a racket back over here, and I looked back there and there was the owl," she said. "Of course, he flew out, and I'm going, 'Oh,' and there's feathers all over, all over. I didn't realize a bird was gone."
They found their yellow canary dead in the corner of the wire bird cage. Their other canary was visibly shaken by the incident as it seemed jumpy and anxious, letting out loud, nervous chirps. "Isn't it strange?" Sue asked. "Who would have thought?" The wire bird cage has small entrances with doors that vertically slide when lifted. The owl would have had to somehow lift the door with its head, beak or talons to get to the songbirds. It had also knocked their water dish out of its place. "It's the strangest thing I've ever heard of," said Beth Paragamian, wildlife education specialist for Idaho Fish and Game and the Bureau of Land Management.
As an expert on North Idaho's birds, she said she was perplexed as to why the owl would be flying so high in an area without many tall trees and taken off guard that it would go through all the trouble of entering a human's home and opening a birdcage just to get to the canaries. "That is very unusual," she said. Although the uninvited guest will not deter the Saussers from taking in the fresh lake air, Don said the couple will be placing twist-ties on the bird cage just in case the hungry bird of prey remembers where they live and that the other canary is still alive.
4 comments:
6-8 inches ? That's about 300mm ?
I really wish the USA would join the rest of the world and become modern.
Tried to get a comparative fuel usage for a car recently, the internet results were all in miles per gallon, so I had to convert a mile, which is a fraction of a league I think, and measures 17,435 lengths of someone's feet, into the normal measurement of kilometres, didn't take too long, but then I was flummoxed when I found out that gallons are different from gallons in the USA. A gallon in the USA is not equal to a gallon in other countries that use old fashioned measuring methods. Go figure, they use archaic measurements (are you sure they went to the moon ?) and even those are all wrong !
Oops, sorry, got side tracked.
I have pet mice, they live in a 2.4 metre long, old aquarium, empty of water of course.
Every night I have to cover the glass with a blanket, because when I don't the native owl here (it's called a Ruru, colloquially a MorePork) comes and repeatedly tries to get the mice, … it can see them, all yummy looking in their house, … so it flies at them, crashing into the glass.
It is quite amazing to watch, made more so by the mice taunting the owl as they must have figured that the owl cannot get through the glass.
They also taunt my cat the same way.
And we think animals are not clever.
Hahaha, cheers for the amusing rant/anecdote, Mr Rocket! :)
Why was the owl so high?
Owls see really well and the cage was right by an open window. Duh...
It's a predator doing what predators do.
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