Arizona Owl Chicks

I now have photographic evidence of the Great Horned Owl chicks at Cattail Cove State Park!  Regular readers of this blog will remember that Jeanette and I spent January and February volunteering at Cattail Cove State Park in Arizona.  While there, Jeanette was very fortunate to find the small cave where the female Great Horned Owl was starting to nest. This was on February 3rd.  Because the incubation period for Great Horned Owl is approximately 35 days, we were not able to see the chicks before we left at the end of February.  Yesterday we received e-mail from Ron and Alison Husak with an attachment of the above photo. Look close and you can see there are three chicks!  Alison was on some of my bird walks, and so knew the location of the nest, and took the above photo yesterday.  Below is the first photo of the mom on the nest, taken on February 3rd, for comparison.