Owl!

[telophase]

There is definitely an owl outside the house! Its calls freaked the cats out. XD Now I'm going trhough owl calls on the web to see if I can match it up with known N. Tex species. (It's a fairly regular hoo-hoo or hoo-hoo-hoo, repeated twice.)

eta: The closest I can find is the great horned owl, which has the 'hoo' sound we were hearing, although allaboutbirds.org (run by Cornell---great site) says they're stuttering, and there was no stutter in what we heard. Hm. It flew away--we could hear the calls fading after a while.

Comments

[lnhammer]

Hoo-hoo-hoo is almost certainly a great horned, yes. And it's the time of year for starting up those mating calls. The shorter series of calls means it's likely a female -- if you hear a long series, more like hu-hu-hooooo hu-hoo hoo hoooooo, that would be a male. (Mid-length, five hoots or so, could be either.)

---L.

[telophase]

Awesome. :) It, or another one, came back a bit later and started giving classic stuttering calls, although it was mid-length so I don't know if it was the same owl or a fella come a-courtin'.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Cool! Every once in a while I'll hear one around here (SE Georgia) but I don't know which species.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

allaboutbirds.org (mentioned in my edit) has recorded calls, which I've been going trhough. :)

I once almost ran over an owl--back when my mom still lived in the house in country we lived in from when I was in highschool until recently, I was driving home one night. The road had an S-bend that was pitch black because of trees close to both sides of the road, and the owl had obviously killed a rodent of some ilk on the road and I scared it off, because it fluttered up suddenly, scaring me, and trailing something furry and fairly large in its claws. (Probably a rabbit; there were a lot out there.)

And a few years ago I saw a burrowing owl near the university I work at one night! :D

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

This article (http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/more-sports/outdoors/20100605-Owls-humans-can-live-together-1406.ece) supports your id: "Gehlbach [a research biologist from Baylor] said most people think of an owl call as a hooting 'who, who, who' sound, but the only Texas owl that makes that sound is the great horned owl..."

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Cool!

Also, I think it reads my LJ as it came back and has been stuttering a hoo hoo-hoo hoo-type call nearby in the last few minutes. XD