Northern Pygmy-Owl

Jeanette and I are just finishing up our first week as Volunteer Hosts at the Welcome Center at Beaver Creek State Natural Area. We have had a lot of interesting visitors, which always makes the days go fast. Jeanette has gotten the lawns mowed and a lot of cleaning done, making the Center a little more presentable. I have been able to concentrate a lot on birds, and have identified 45 different species in this past week.  The bird that has gotten other birders the most excited is the Northern Pygmy-Owl we saw on Tuesday. As we were walking back to the RV after closing the Welcome Center at four o’clock, we heard a great deal of commotion up in a fir tree.  Looking at it with the binoculars we identified it as a Red-Crossbill. Then we noticed what had it excited, it was this Northern Pygmy-Owl in a nearby Hemlock tree. Thank goodness I got the photo, because we were not sure what kind of owl we had until we compared the photo to a number of bird guides. Northern Pygmy-Owls are very small, only about seven inches, and most interesting is that they do most of their hunting during the day.