Great Horned Owl Sighted

January 26th's Early Morning Discovery Hike was W...I..N..D...Y and COLD. We had temps in the high teens and a steady wind of at least 20mph with much higher gusts, so needless to say, we high-tailed it into the shelter of the woods for the duration of our morning hike!

With cold temps and windy conditions, we didn't expect to see much in the way of birds as they would most likely be hanging out somewhere trying to stay warm and not blowing away. For the most part, our guess was correct, we had very few species on our hike, but we did have one amazing sighting that made up for the cold and the wind... a wonderful look at a Great Horned Owl!! This magnificent owl played hard to get at first, but after some patience on our part, we lucked out and it flew towards us, perched on an exposed branch, gave us a piercing look and then silently flew off deeper into the woods. Wow.

Needless to say, throughout the rest of the hike we spoke of the possibility of the seeing the owl again and the chance that he/she may be nesting in this woods. Generally usurping previous Red-tailed Hawk or Crow nests, Great Horned Owls will nest very early in the season (they are on the nest early as late January, brrrr) and are able to keep the eggs a comfy 98 degrees, even in subzero weather! It is not uncommon to see incubating female covered in snow while on the nest. While we didn't see it again during the hike, it was re-spotting Wednesday morning and we are hopeful that in the coming weeks we might find more evidence of our 'resident' owl!

That's all for this week's report. Stay warm and we hope to see YOU in the Parks soon!

**NewsFlash**

Volunteer Workshop

Saturday, Jan. 30, 10am

-or-

Saturday, Feb. 6, 3pm

All current volunteers or anyone interested in spending some volunteer time with Darke County Parks, please call the Nature Center (937.548.0165) and let us know what day you can attend. We'll spend the time with some general refresher courses, learn some of the new methods of doing things around the Parks and more! Please try to attend one of the workshop dates regardless of how much or little time you have to volunteer with us. Oh, did I mention there would be home-made chili afterwards??!

**NewsFlash**

Location: DCP - Shawnee Prairie Preserve
Observation date: 1/26/10
Number of species: 16

Canada Goose 10
Great Horned Owl 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Downy Woodpecker 2
Blue Jay 2
Carolina Chickadee 3
Tufted Titmouse 2
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
European Starling 1
American Tree Sparrow 4
White-throated Sparrow 1
Dark-eyed Junco 7
Northern Cardinal 20
House Finch 8
American Goldfinch 2
House Sparrow 1

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)