Bird of the Week – Northern Hawk Owl
Another Alaskan owl, now much harder to find, is the Northern Hawk Owl.
Northern Hawk Owl, Delta Barley Project, Alaska Highway
The Hawk Owl has the longest tail among North American owls. The black border around the white facial disk is also a great field mark. Like the Boreal Owl, the Northern Hawk Owl is a plunge dive feeder, and is suffering from the unseasonable mid-winter rain storms, which make it impossible for them to punch through the snow to the prey below. Last year WC saw exactly one Hawk Owl.
For more bird photos, please visit Frozen Feather Images.
Alaska Pi: An “irruption” of birds is a mass movement that is not a seasonal migration. The movement of young Snowy Owls down the east coast this winter is an irruption. In the case, it’s a movement in search of food. Irruptions don’t happen every year. They are irregular, in contrast to annual migrations.
Thank you WC.
I love the way it appears to be a flower on the branch. Gorgeous, WC. Thanks.
“A bird of boreal forests, the Northern Hawk Owl is distinctive among owls for its morphology and behavior. In winters of food scarcity, it irrupts southward into southern Canada and the northern United States. ”
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Hawk_Owl/lifehistory
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I don’t quite understand what irrupts means here. Does the owl move southward or do southerly birds have more chicks or some combination thereof?
Definition of irrupts doesn’t seem to fit the program. I think what it means is wingnuts falsify voting records to make it appear more Hawk-Owls voted for them than Dems. I could be wrong.It’is snowing-off and on.
🙂 think you’re wrong this time , mikey.
Snowed overnight here, melted off and is ~40 deg right now
😉 ) 🙂 🙂 🙂 X100 gaillion.
🙂 gazillion,damn it!