This may explain why this owl spent what I thought was an inordinate amount of time looking towards the group of humans watching it today. There did not appear to be any reason as all the birders I observed were staying back and not engaging in any obvious behavior that might cause it to watch us (other than being there but it should be somewhat habituated to that). As noted by Dennis Garrison birds, like bears the old Yellowstone park bears, start associating humans with food when they have been fed by them. When the owl is watching us it is not engaging in it's activities of daily living.
SeEtta Moss Canon City http://Birds On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 6:13 PM, <per...@aol.com> wrote: > I saw the Snowy Owl swoop down three times, catch a brown lab rat (pet > store rat) that a homeowner was releasing from a small plastic bucket next a > photographer with a huge lens, then fly to a rooftop perch, swallow the rat > head first, in a gulp. Others have reported feeding behavior as I recall. > Joe Roller, Denver >
