 While
today was another good day inside the nest, the next few days will be the
most difficult ones of Ward's year. The owlets are now big enough to eat a
lot of food, but not mature enough to allow June to leave the nest and
help out with the hunting. Ward is therefore forced to hunt both day and
night with little time for sleep or rest. He brought in larger prey last
night, so that June was left with a whole blue jay and a shrew at dawn.
This made for two good meals for the owlets, but was almost gone by 2pm
when Ward delivered another shrew. He had been trying all day, but endless
swarms of harassing birds made it extremely difficult by denying him the
element of surprise. June is shown here as she prepares for another
feeding session with the rapidly growing owlets. They wheezed for food for
most of the day and seemed almost to attack June when she started ripping
up the prey. Feeding the owlets looks like dangerous work and I'm not
surprised that Ward never enters the nest to give it a try. |