From Patricia Thomas
Short-Eared owls in flight exhibiting a courtship behavior of clapping their wings. I think she was charmed.
My dating game the last few years.
Aww, good things will come to you when the time is right!
Hopefully you can wow them with some nifty owl facts to help break in the ice!
Great pic too!
Heyyyy Baby - look what I can do!
Found a good video showing the mating flight, and you can hear the clapping sound. It is quite a different sound than I was expecting, more of a click/pop than a clap/thwump.
The video also shows a grown man imitating it in front of some gorgeous scenery.
That was highly entertaining. I was thoroughly enteretained by the owl, owl noises, and the guy mimicking them. I was a little distressed at the idea of dragging a rope to find the nests. And then the video production logo at the end was 100% unexpected and worth the whole thing.
Oh wow, I was eating lunch and missed the rope dragging! I’d never heard of it, but it’s such a smart idea! I give a short paper describing the technique!
They put a length of lightweight rope between a pair of 4 wheelers and slowly go across the area to search. The rope is light, so it rides higher up in the grass, and the nest is down in a depression, so that combo keeps the eggs from being hurt.
As soon as an owl gets flushed, they stop, and then they can follow the rope line to find the nest and flag it for study!
It lets them search huge areas in much less time with little chance of hurting anything. Genius!
