Late Night Hooting: Day 63

A creature has been lurking in the dark around our cabin. Although never seen, its "winnowing"call can be heard echoing through the forest on cold clear nights. No it's not Big Foot, he sleeps at the foot of our bed, it's the Boreal Owl (Aegolius funereus). These small secretive owls are residents of the boreal and sub-alpine forests of the far north, with a circumpolar range that extends into the Rockies. Their cryptic lifestyle and difficult habitat makes them one of the least known species of owl in North America. The call we've been hearing (SOUNDS), as iconic to the arctic winter night as a robin's call  is to an English summer day, is the male attempting to attract a female. Boreal owls nest in tree cavities excavated by woodpeckers. During the winter males seek out and defend these nesting cavities in hopes of enticing a mate. Once a pair has been established, in the spring females will lay up to six eggs with an incubation period of about one month. We've been hearing a male regularly calling all winter in the trees just outside our cabin, and since nesting cavities can be in high demand, I built an owl box and placed it high in a tree within viewing distance of our living room window. Hopefully by spring we'll have ourselves a pair of owls, and by summer a brood of awkward boreal owl fledglings.

Here's a  cool video of a boreal owl hunting: VIDEO

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-100 f/22 @ 1/4 sec.