Syracuse.com - Chittenango woman has close encounter with young great horned owl at Green Lakes

[HuntingNY-News]

She was only three feet away. She could have reached out and touched it.

Genie Dibble has been following a family of great horned owls at Green Lakes State Park for 13 years.

"At least I think it's the same pair - or at least relatives," she said.

Throughout the warmer months, Dibble, 72, of Chittenango, hikes around the park with her Nikon D90 digital camera around her neck. She's constantly snapping photos of the park's floura and fawns, printing up calendars each year of her best shots.

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Earlier this month she had a first - a face-to-face encounter with a baby great horned owl. It was on ground, on a log and was only about three feet away. She could have reached out and touched it, but thought better.

Mom and dad look on. Great horned owls are nicknamed 'feathered tigers" because of how aggresssive they are to prey.Genie Dibble 

"It's a good thing she didn't. The adult female might have made her opinion known at that point," said Laura Erickson, former science editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and author of several books on birds.

"There's people out there with permanent scars on the back of their heads or backs for picking up or grabbing at young great horned owls."

Erickson said great horned owls are the largest owls that breed in this state and have the nickname of "feathered tigers." Although they don't weigh very much (adults get up to about 3 ½ pounds) they have no hesitation about taking on rabbits, skunks and other prey of that size.

"If the animal is too big to carry away, they'll eat it (where they killed it) or just eat the head," she said.

Erickson said great horned owls mate for life and once they find a good breeding ground they'll stick around. One banded owl, she said, was found to 28 years old.

She said the females are larger than the males. She said both make "a soft, mellow 'who-who,' " and maintain auditory contact with each other by calling back and forth. The female's call is noticeably higher and softer than the males call, which is generally louder and lower pitched.

Dibble said although the birds she's been following seem to return to the same place every year in the park, it's not always easy to find them. Often she has to stay still and listen for their calls.

Dibble said this year she was initially alerted to the female's presence by its call. After spotting it, she followed and photographed as it flew from one tree to another. At point, she just sat down and tried to be still. It was then that she turned and noticed the baby owl nearby on a log.

"That night, we had a terrific storm with high winds and all," she said. "I came back the following day and couldn't find them. I thought the worst. I felt guilty, that either the mother might have taken it away, or that the young bird might have been killed in the storm."

A couple of weeks later, she returned and saw the adult female and the young bird near each other in a tree.

"I was really relieved," she said.

For more on great horned owls, check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website at allaboutbirds.org.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog