A barred owl spent close to an hour in my (midwest US) backyard a couple days ago, flying to various trees and apparently staring through my living room window (it was a cloudy day, so not much reflections). I have two pet removedatiels, who were really disturbed by presumably being eyed as an exotic snack. We eventually closed the blinds (spooking the owl - it could definitely see us).
Like you say, can’t be mad, but it is an interesting intellectual tension.
I can one up you on a spooky owl story here, I was jogging at night on a mountain trail in the spring, and had an owl dive bomb me, over and over and it touched my hair on my head on the second pass. I got spooked and took off my shirt and helicoptered it overhead. The thing followed me for a half mile.
No real danger sure, but it was creepy, in the night in the woods. Owls are cool.
The first was a service dog at a zoo and the African painted dogs all started getting excited and coming up to the glass where the service dog was. Everyone was all “aww, cute puppers!” but those painted dogs are very aggressive pack hunters. That stuff likely would have become lunch if not for the glass.
The other one was of people that raised a crow and let it go but it comes back. They were petting it and everybody thought that was cute. It was a female crow doing courtship behavior. It’s imprinted and sees the human as its mate and is asking you to impregnate it! 😳
All natural behaviors, though both uncomfortable in their own ways! 😄
I believe African painted dogs have the highest hunting success rate on the continent. They’re dogged Pursuits of their prey, not unlike how humans used to hunt, is unmatched by any other wild animal in Africa. I think, actually that tiny little cat, the smallest cat in the world that lives in Africa, that actually has a higher rate now that I think about it it’s like 90% or something crazy.
I’ve seen posts on both of those pop up this month. The painted dogs in the story i mentioned, and i think some center or zoo was promoting the birth of the killer cat, the black-footed cat, though googling it, that’s a 60% success rate. Checking for owls, the 2 studies that popped up first has Snowies around 50% and Screech Owls at 56% on vertabrates and 83% on invertebrates. Take that, black-footed land owl.
I forget if I’ve seen the black-footed cat, but I have seen the dogs a few times. I’m a fan.
I was jogging once, young deerflies were following me, landing on my head constantly, forgot a hat. For like 4 miles, just constant, until I passed a pond, and the dragonflies came out, zipped around me, no more flies.
They are really cool, unfortunately, their whatchacallit, life in the water, they target tadpoles too, which themselves are the greatest destroyer of parasitic insect larvae. They are malicious looking too, they’ve a spear of sorts they impale their victims on. Cool to watch if a bit macabre.
They don’t follow their prey, they anticipate their movements, which is singular as far as we know. Their flying ability is second to none, and their vision incredible, they’ve way more eyes than flies and the like which have hundreds, I forget.
Their sex is weird, they join and fuck in the air. A male that finds a female already fucked will grab her, it has a scoop it uses to remove the semen of the previous male, and then mates, in the air, can’t recall the name for it at the moment.
A barred owl spent close to an hour in my (midwest US) backyard a couple days ago, flying to various trees and apparently staring through my living room window (it was a cloudy day, so not much reflections). I have two pet removedatiels, who were really disturbed by presumably being eyed as an exotic snack. We eventually closed the blinds (spooking the owl - it could definitely see us).
Like you say, can’t be mad, but it is an interesting intellectual tension.
I can one up you on a spooky owl story here, I was jogging at night on a mountain trail in the spring, and had an owl dive bomb me, over and over and it touched my hair on my head on the second pass. I got spooked and took off my shirt and helicoptered it overhead. The thing followed me for a half mile.
No real danger sure, but it was creepy, in the night in the woods. Owls are cool.
Lol at least it acknowledged your existence! 😂
That reminds me of 2 posts I saw today.
The first was a service dog at a zoo and the African painted dogs all started getting excited and coming up to the glass where the service dog was. Everyone was all “aww, cute puppers!” but those painted dogs are very aggressive pack hunters. That stuff likely would have become lunch if not for the glass.
The other one was of people that raised a crow and let it go but it comes back. They were petting it and everybody thought that was cute. It was a female crow doing courtship behavior. It’s imprinted and sees the human as its mate and is asking you to impregnate it! 😳
All natural behaviors, though both uncomfortable in their own ways! 😄
I believe African painted dogs have the highest hunting success rate on the continent. They’re dogged Pursuits of their prey, not unlike how humans used to hunt, is unmatched by any other wild animal in Africa. I think, actually that tiny little cat, the smallest cat in the world that lives in Africa, that actually has a higher rate now that I think about it it’s like 90% or something crazy.
I’ve seen posts on both of those pop up this month. The painted dogs in the story i mentioned, and i think some center or zoo was promoting the birth of the killer cat, the black-footed cat, though googling it, that’s a 60% success rate. Checking for owls, the 2 studies that popped up first has Snowies around 50% and Screech Owls at 56% on vertabrates and 83% on invertebrates. Take that, black-footed land owl.
I forget if I’ve seen the black-footed cat, but I have seen the dogs a few times. I’m a fan.
Dragonflies are the highest success rate in the animal Kingdom at 95%.
I always forget about them! Go, dragonflies!
I was jogging once, young deerflies were following me, landing on my head constantly, forgot a hat. For like 4 miles, just constant, until I passed a pond, and the dragonflies came out, zipped around me, no more flies.
They are really cool, unfortunately, their whatchacallit, life in the water, they target tadpoles too, which themselves are the greatest destroyer of parasitic insect larvae. They are malicious looking too, they’ve a spear of sorts they impale their victims on. Cool to watch if a bit macabre.
Sounds like I need to do some more learning on dragonflies… 🤔
They don’t follow their prey, they anticipate their movements, which is singular as far as we know. Their flying ability is second to none, and their vision incredible, they’ve way more eyes than flies and the like which have hundreds, I forget.
Their sex is weird, they join and fuck in the air. A male that finds a female already fucked will grab her, it has a scoop it uses to remove the semen of the previous male, and then mates, in the air, can’t recall the name for it at the moment.