I didn't think there was time to tromp through the deep snow and get a close look...
... but he wasn't bothered by our presence at all and seemed to be in an unwakeable pre-sleep trance. or do owls sleep like that, with eyes slitted?
No, no, I saw the head swivel a bit. He was looking at us, but he's used to people walking around under his space and it would take a lot more to rouse him from his sweet torpor.
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As opposed to an irascible torpor.
Very cool! It looks well fed. Probably too stuffed to react to you. That's the look my family has at Thanksgiving.
Our neighborhood owl is cool with us coming close and saying hello when it is on "rodent patrol". Fun owl fact: owls are the only bird that flies silently. On the obverse it's wing can not get wet and still support the owl in flight.
Trump at Vegas Rally honored the 1980 American Ice Hockey teams miracle on ice. Great memory. That was where the USA chant started.
I see Yovanovitch has scored a 7 figure book deal as payment for her anti Trump testimony. Sweet!
"irascible torpor.”
Who hasn’t been there?
Beautiful creature. There is a god.
Owl was too fat to fly
Gorgeous. And the owl is too. The predator birds are my favorite. Their size and strength make them the strongmen of birds.
Biden: "The middle class are getting killed right now." He talks movingly about how dads who lost jobs used to tell their children, "It's going to be OK," Not sure about that anymore. H/T Mickey Kaus
What color do you guys think the sky is in Biden’s world? If Dad can’t find a job today... What is this “middle class” that’s "getting killed”? Who does this resonate with?
Andrew McCabe.
Nancy Pelosi wants the video of her tearing up the State of the Union taken down. That was a real win for her then.
MSNBC’s @Lawrence O’Donnell: "The president is a Russian operative. That sounds like the description of a bad Hollywood screenplay, but it is real, and it is Vladimir Putin’s greatest achievement.”
Says @RichardGrenell nomination came at Putin’s direction.
Trump’s a traitor! No wonder people are taking runs at Trump supporters with their cars.
A week ago I heard an owl's whoooo whooooo from somewhere in the heavily wooded neighborhood in which I was walking very early, well before sun-up. But it wasn't the calming sound one sometimes hears in the forest. I wasn't at all sure it was an owl at all. At first I couldn't imagine what odd scene I was approaching, but coming around a corner, I heard a flurry of activity ahead of me. Anxious noise. I stopped; proceeded; another sudden round of the anxious noise. This time I glimpsed something -- a large bird beating its wings as I moved unintentionally towards it. Beating its wings while staying low, on the ground. It was clear I was disturbing it and it was warning me away. So why didn't it fly? Injury?
I retreated and took a different route. When I had finished the walk, I got in my car so I could use the headlights and see. My very slow approach finally sent him, or her, off into the air. The other owl's body was on the pavement, right alongside the curb. The spouse I had chased was not going to give the dead mate up.
The owl is hoping you will drop some food, maybe a couple sunflower seeds or a few crumbs of a granola bar. A mouse will sneak out to nibble on the dropped crumbs and BAM!!! One well-fed owl.
So the folks at WaPo called Richard Grenell an unqualified loyalist.
What a bunch of homophobes. Somebody give them a rainbow flag.
Hawk and owl fight over a nest, h/t Coyne.
We have 'em in the tall trees in the park next to our backyard. They sit up there looking for a mouse, roof rat, chihuahua...
Almost weekly there are posts on our neighborhood website asking if anyone has seen a small missing dog.
I always enjoy coming across good nature pics. Have a lot, a handful of good ones. These are great. My avatar pic was taken at a Mississippi River refuge handled by the state DNR during a presentation where they handled live raptors. Lots of fun. That owl? weighs 5 or 6 lbs. They are all hollow bones and feathers!
"So the folks at WaPo called Richard Grenell an unqualified loyalist.”
Wait for it..... TO PUTIN!
Oh, that’s MSNBC.
The WaPo is the company newsletter of the CIA.
Great Horned owls feed on other owls, especially young. My owl boxes do not have roosts at the holes top keep great horned owls from landing there and snatching young.
"Oh what a beautiful mooorning.."
The kind of early Spring morning today that is awesome. I admit the corn is not as high as an elephant's eye here, however. Go outside everyone!!
Great photos! Owls are interesting creatures...
Biden: "The middle class are getting killed right now." He talks movingly about how dads who lost jobs used to tell their children, "It's going to be OK," Not sure about that anymore.
The Democrats have to invent an alternate universe where Trump is an evil tyrant and things are terrible every day.
Then they have to find people dumb enough to inhabit it.
The Barred Owl in your photo was asking a personal question about you and Meade: "who cooks for you?"
The sun is out in Star Prairie WI with an expected high of 41º today. The wood burner is off.
God is great, and Donald John Trump is still our President.
❤❤👍🙂👍
Love the owl photos! :-)
Althouse, you're a regular Marlin Perkins.
Does that make Meade Jim?
Superb owl!
I love listening to them hoot. Thank you.
I appreciate Althouse's use of the word "tromp." I think I remember her using the word "traipse" also. It occurs to me that these words may be dying out...I remember my mother using them regularly but I haven't been seeing them in current writing. Our twenty-something kids don't use these words either.
We have the same beautiful weather today in Michigan.
Spring is in the air. Still burning wood as to open the glass on the storm door to get some fresh air in the house.
Rainy and dismal in central Arizona. Good for the spring wildflowers, which are starting to pop up everywhere...
I like the French word for owl, hibou, pronounced ee-BOO.
(That's for the male. The female is la chouette.)
Sun*rise*, eh? So not the owl of Athena.
(He's a beauty. As are the pics.)
Irascible raptor in rapture.
more Illuminati symbolism. Sigh.
...from the All-Seeing Eye of Althouse's camera lens. ;-)
The old fellow looks kind of - wise, I guess I would say. Nothing is purer than a young snowy owl, white as can be, Michigan is full of them.
Owls' ears are asymmetrical--one low on the head and the other high. Triangulation. (Hey it's on youtube so it has to be true, right?)
RD, what about "tump"?
Narr
Regional?
What a beautiful bird!
Such a lovely bird!
Was smiling at the bird carers described in the article Fernandistein linked to because I was suspicious of their bird concerns (fat thighs and abdomden) so PCly tracking human fat area concerns; but I guess it's possible that they weren't trying to be good comrades in the struggle.
One of the best things about life in Florida was the little ground-dwelling owls that I'd see on the way to and from work.
Lawrence wants the hammering to stop.
It won't.
What a hoot!
We have several Barred Owls in the woods around our house. Several generations over the last 20 years. They keep the rodents down and have become kind of a family to us. Beautiful birds.
"who cooks for you?"
Exactly. :)
Athena the wise old owl.This pic must be taken in a University town. Bet she has tenure too.
He can't just say "Give a hoot. Don't pollute." anymore.
He's got a whole powerpoint presentation about global climate change.
And if you don't recycle properly, watch out for death from above if you.
Great Horned owls feed on other owls, especially young. My owl boxes do not have roosts at the holes to keep great horned owls from landing there and snatching young.
Re my despondent owl, Michael K? I first considered the possibility that the owl I encountered was defending kill. But it had been there sometime, since I had heard it for at least five minutes before I arrived on the spot, and it was making odd calls. And when I came back 15-20 minutes or so later in my car, the dead owl on the street was still intact, untouched and appeared a full-grown owl. If these were Great Horned owls, they usually mate for life, I have since read. I still suspect some kind of grieving ritual or last bit of protection for a mate, but perhaps I am romanticizing.
"I remember my mother using them regularly but I haven't been seeing them in current writing. Our twenty-something kids don't use these words either."
I was playing Classic Words Free on my tablet the other day and the computer came up with "jewie," Aussie slang for jewfish.
Made me feel like an anti-Semite for playing a game that would use that word.
I used "jism" today and felt no anti- nuttin', just great pleasure it worked.
Ejecta was used in the same game, by the computer. They have crazy unique slang, but don't use any strategy, such as going for triple word scores or blocking the opponent from using a triple word score, so I have only lost 5% of games.
Words used last game (not by me): Dojo, exuvia, hoosh, bewray, coram, kerne, algid, qindar, ariot, peba. I won 294 to 191 with two Bingos, raidings and raiding.
And when I came back 15-20 minutes or so later in my car, the dead owl on the street was still intact, untouched and appeared a full-grown owl.
I have encountered owls, looked like barn owls, feeding on a kill in the middle of our residential street as I drove by at 4 AM. A car going fast might hit and kill such an owl.
Looks like the Bloomberg/ Hillary balloon fizzled.
The corporate press / deep state Hillary press big lie that “Russia is helping trump and sanders “ Bs makes me laugh. Only hiveminders buy that bs
The owl is not fat, just cold. Like all birds, in cold weather it will fluff its feathers out to trap air and stay warm, which gives the appearance of a fat bird.
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