Not a direct answer to the question, but to my recollection
nocturnal/crepuscular birds trace their lineage together by adding
sensitivity at night (i.e.
https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-019-1508-y).
I took this as a suggestion they were expanding into a niche rather than
confined by it.
“Mark” Konishi (caltech) did truly phenomenal work in the barn owl, showing
how they localized pray in the dark. If my graduate school memory holds
well, they formed pre-existing visual maps then used aural maps to locate
the prey within the map (in the lab).
Short-ear I feel I most often find (and recently in the San Juans) hunting
in daylight. Though the tree-to-tree (-to-tree etc) behavior upon being
mobbed I’ve seen in just about every major species I think of (most
recently in an October GHOW on Spieden Island & an August BAOW in Olympia).
My (just-a-) feeling is that the selective pressure of the slower moving
(quiet) hulks is that they’re now excluded from daytime hunting only to
avoid being mobbed. They can day hunt like any falcon, but their niche
expanded to dark, and then the pressure relaxed so they got a little slower
and agorophic to deal with the ruckus of mobs. But! if not for the mobs,
they’d hunt all day long.
If someone had good resources one way or the other, I’d like to read it (or
just anecdotes to hear it!).
Stephen
On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 3:46 PM Darrel Faxon <t4c1x@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
------------------------------
*From: *"t4c1x" <t4c1x@xxxxxxxx>
*To: *"Pam Johnson" <shovzan@xxxxxxxxx>
*Sent: *Friday, October 29, 2021 3:46:18 PM
*Subject: *Re: [obol] Barred Owl question
Seeing them in the daylight is nothing new. It has been going on here for
years. I also frequently hear them hooting at night and, not infrequently,
during the day.
Darrel
------------------------------
*From: *"Pam Johnson" <shovzan@xxxxxxxxx>
*To: *"t4c1x" <t4c1x@xxxxxxxx>
*Sent: *Friday, October 29, 2021 3:14:05 PM
*Subject: *Re: [obol] Barred Owl question
I might say I've seen them in the daytime more than I've heard them in the
night, but it seems preposterous. Still, it might be true.
Pam
On Fri, Oct 29, 2021, 1:56 PM Darrel Faxon <t4c1x@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
A couple of times lately I have seen Barred Owls out and about in broad
daylight. I assume they were hunting. Is this an accurate assessment, and
does it agree with what others have observed?
Darrel
