Before he knew better, my dad found one in the woods behind his childhood
home. He picked it up as one would a mediumm sized ball, sat it on his
shoulder, and there it stayed (voluntarily) as he walked around for the
day. He returned it to its branch before the Sun went down.
To hear this level of “stubbornness” repeated, it makes me wonder just how
common it is, or what might be known about daylight torpor?
Stephen
ps thanks to all for the IR posts. It has been very interesting, and may
finally provide the justification I’ve tried to avoid for getting one for
years. :)
On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 10:59 AM Tanner Martin <simonthetanner@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
When a pygmy owl decides it's not going to budge, there is nothing that
can make it move short of actually grabbing it.
They used to hunt at our bird feeders in the Columbia Highlands of far NE
Washington when I was growing up, and I remember my mom trying to chase one
away. It was perched just high enough to be out of reach and she was
yelling and throwing snow at it, and it just sat there glowering at her.
She actually had to hit it with a snowball to finally persuade it to leave.
Another of our friends had one at their feeder, again perched just out of
reach on a pine branch. My friend grabbed the branch and shook it as hard
as he could – which meant the owl near the and of the branch was being
thrown around a lot - and that owl would not leave. My friend finally gave
up.
Anyway, pygmy owls are one of the most stubborn creatures imaginable when
they want to be. While most people are better at detecting them than I am,
I'm also confident that even the best of us walk past far more of them than
we detect, and likely at much closer range than we realize.
Tanner
On Mar 27, 2023, at 9:54 AM, larspernorgren <larspernorgren@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Thermal sensitive technology is more appropriate than folks might
imagine. I once climbed a leafless maple in February in hopes of a better
chance of seeing a persistently tooting NOPO. It went briefly silent as l
climbed to about 5m above the forest floor. I was astounded when it
resumed tooting, at my eye level only 2m away. I might have sat there for
an hour and never seen it.
My friend Julio was hiking in Olympic NP and found a NOPO perched
similarly at eye level beside the trail. Dozens of hikers went by without
noticing it. A great case of cryptic plumage, like a Poorwill or
Nighthawks.
Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
