[Bristol-Birds] Long-eared Owl, Johnson City

From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 22:52:50 -0500
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Scott Somershoe 
To: TN-Birds 
Sent: January 18, 2013 10:37
Subject: [TN-Bird] Long-eared Owl, Johnson City


I spent a snowy night on Thursday, Jan 17 with David Kirschke and his family in 
Johnson City, Washington Co.  While practicing my snowball throwing skills 
about 10pm (never too old to play in the snow!) with David's daughter before 
David came outside, I just happened to look in the right place at the right 
time and saw a Long-eared Owl fly out of the hemlock on the side of his house 
and watched it fly across the street.  The bird was maybe 20 ft high and 25 ft 
away from me, almost flying directly at me.  The bird was well lit up in the 
ambient light from the cloud cover and the snow on the ground. Although my look 
lasted about 4 seconds, I got quite a good look at the bird and it's behavior, 
size, shape, etc.  In contrast to a great horned owl, I noted the shorter 
length of the bird, smaller and leaner body with smaller head (not a big bulky, 
heavy-bodied bird), and narrower wings with a much faster flapping rate with 
relatively shallow wing beats (not deep powerful relatively slow wing beats).  
In the bright "light" I was able to see the brown/tan color of the body and 
could see half of the contrastingly different golden facial disk (as it was 
almost flying directly at me).  I recently spent 2 years observing great 
horneds almost daily from my backyard where they nested (and flew around a lot 
during the day when they had chicks). I quickly became well versed in their 
body shape, size, wing length and flapping rate and this bird was all wrong for 
a great horned. Being this close helps too! I also saw a Long-eared in early 
December when I was up north, so two in two months is petty awesome!  

David came outside a few minutes later and was pelted with snowballs.  We tried 
to relocate the bird but it must have flown around the big magnolia across the 
street and kept going.  I found nothing this morning in a quick search of the 
trees.

On my way home today (Jan 18), I stopped at the Kingston Steam Plant (Roane 
Co.) to look for Brown-headed Nuthatches.  I was rewarded with at least 7 
Brown-headed Nuthatches (3 flew into the pines from across the train tracks), 
an immature Snow Goose, 24 Bonaparte's Gulls, and a Western Palm Warbler.

Great birding (even if some was unintentional)!
Scott Somershoe



State Ornithologist
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency
P.O. Box 40747
Nashville, TN 37204
615-781-6653 (office)
615-781-6654 (fax)
[Bristol-Birds] Long-eared Owl, Johnson City

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