That’s Eleanor the Barred Owl who’s become the favorite of homeowner, Elizabeth von Radics, whose house looks out onto the large bare deciduous tree where the owl roosted for a month, then vanished.  Today Eleanor is back on that roost, says Elizabeth.  And that’s reason enough to post this great pic she got of “her” owl before the disappearance and subsequent reappearance.  I first blogged about the Medford Barred Owl back on January 7.

Coincidentally, owls seem to be about as present around here right now as they are in a Harry Potter movie. On the way to the monthly Audubon meeting last night Bill Hering, my wife and I were passed over by a Screech-owl on a darkened street.  Then the talk at the meeting was by Vince Zauskey, life-long owl lover and owl researcher from time-to-time.  He’s done work on northwest forest owls, and showed us pictures of the first-ever confirmed Oregon hyrbid, a Sparred Owl.  That’s a cross between a Barred and Spotted Owl.  Vince even imitated the hybrid’s call, a mix of the two species’ normal sounds.  And he told us there’s concern among widlife biologists that the increasingly broken habitat of deep forest is allowing the Barred Owl to move in, pushing out the more secretive and forest-needy Spotted.  Eleanor is an example of how adaptable the Barred Owl can be.  Nobody in Medford will ever have a healthy Spotted Owl roosting in their frontyard, over a busy street.

Here’s local newspaper column on the feds’ approach to the Barred v. Spotted Owl question.

The most commonly seen owls in these parts are Great Horned, Barn, Western Screech and Pygmy.  Of course, the prize sighting* is the Great Gray and Vince has seen them on nests and hunting in the mountains east of Ashland.  That’s about twenty minutes drive from where I stand right now.  During the cold months the GG can hear voles beneath the snow and catch the mammals sight unseen, crashing through the snow to grab the rodents.  We’re on the very edge of the GG range here in the Siskiyous.  Many range maps do not accurately show the bird’s presence this far west and at the “low elevations” down to 3000′ in this area.  It would be highly unusual to see one any further west than the mountains between Ashland and Klamath.

The story here on my favorite owl, the diurnal Burrowing, is familiar.  Fewer sightings as the years pass.  No breeding known in the entire Rogue Valley. An attempt to reintroduce them more than a decade ago failed.  Good to know there’s one being seen regularly near my old stomping grounds at San Francisco’s Land’s End. 

* That’s because I still haven’t seen one.  If and when I do the Long-eared, which continues to elude me, will suddenly move to the top of my list, followed by the diminutive Ferruginous, which is found here with some difficulty according to Vince.