The first I believe was an Eastern Screech-Owl. Picture taken in my yard back when I had a camera with no zoom at all, late afternoon. I wasn't that interested in birds yet back then, but these caught my interest enough I tried to get pictures. The trees were heavily shaded, so I have lightened the picture a lot so you can see the owl. There were 3-5 babies playing in the trees each afternoon. They looked like little gray downy fluff balls. Each day, they would alert me they were out for the day with their odd noises... first, it would sound like small young puppies yipping, then change to noises like small monkeys chattering. The adult would set back in another tree on a bare branch and watch the babies jump around from tree to intersecting tree. My husband had the dead wood all cut out of the trees that year, and we never had any more owls after that.
(took me forever to figure out what these owls might be)
May 2003
The second I think is a Great Horned Owl (I had mis-identified this one as the Eastern Screech-Owl for a long time, not realizing that they were a very small owl... this one was big)
November 2009.
