The babies are so big! They are now up to Mrs Owl’s chest. Two weeks ago (they are 15 and 18 days old now) they were the size of golf balls.
They’re getting the hang of their wings, doing little practice flaps. You can easily see their wing feathers coming in.
They are learning to groom themselves.
They’re now also bigger than most of their food, and I can see them feeding themselves. The older one seems to be able to swallow the small mice whole now according to some comments.
It may sound scary to have these little guys swallowing whole food since we know how bad that can be for human babies, but the owlets are built for this! From the Owl Research Institute:
The trachea is separate from the esophagus, so the food goes down the esophagus into the proventriculus, where digestion starts. The esophagus can expand quite a bit, and muscle contractions force the prey down. The trachea is a small opening behind the tongue where the owl breathes. It is surrounded by the glottis, which is the entrance to the trachea. The glottis reflexively closes when touched, which prevents food from going into the lungs. The esophagus is much larger than the small tracheal opening. As well, owls can breathe through their nares (nostrils on their bills).
Mrs Owl makes sure they both get enough to eat. With some birds, the one that hatches first will use its size advantage to outcompete the smaller nestlings, but this doesn’t seem to be much of a concern with the GHO. From the cam owner:
The Mom will usually try to fill the older larger one up first, since they will be the hungriest, and to settle them down. With GHO’s though, all the other owlet has to do is make the effort to “stick their beak in”, and they WILL get their share in. If not as much as the owlet that feeding, then the next feeding they will get more, but again, “as long as they stick their beak in”
The nightly feeding requirements are 5 rodents or 1 duck/rabbit. Most nights Mr Owl has been pretty successful with the hunt.
Mrs Owl is still keeping a constant lookout. The eagle was back in the area, though there was not an incident this time.
Yeah, it’s crazy how fast they grow. And no wonder, the way they eat. I don’t know how the parents keep up. Quote from here:
That was a really good write up!
I was really feeling this part the other week as we were getting a good amount of rain on the East Coast. I always thought of nesting as peaceful, but now it seems pretty harsh and definitely not something I’d want to do.
Of all the prey Mr Owl has caught, I’ve been most surprised by the sheer number of snakes he’s gotten. And even though I know the GHO can take some pretty big prey, the heron/stilt bird looking thing he brought back looked huge in relation to everything else in the nest at the time.