[TN-Bird] Re: baby owls, warblers, moths and such
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Tennessee Birds" <tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 17:00:03 -0500
Dean Edwards and TN-Birders :
WOW! Young Great Horned Owls squealing on 17 January in Tennessee!
Is this some kind of state record? I am not sure but it seems early to me.
If Great Horned Owl young hatched on 17 Jan and were not able to hold
their heads up or even make a barley audible sound of any kind, the eggs
would have been laid at least by maybe December 20 or before. Eggs
are incubated 26 to 35 days. If the young are of an advanced age and
large enough to be erect in the nest and make vocal squealing for food,
then the eggs may have been laid in the second week of December.
That would be astonishing for Tennessee.
Since you reported more than one young squealing (2 is the typical
number of young in a nest) the first egg would have been laid anywhere from
about
15 Dec to perhaps 18 Dec at the latest. This is based on the assumption
that the eggs were laid from two to three days apart as Great Horned Owls
often do.
We've climbed to several nests here in the Northeast Tennessee area
which had eggs and also banded several nests of young birds and never had
anything earlier than 21 Jan for eggs. That nest was in Virginia and within
a hundred
yards of the Tennessee state line. Virginia's earliest egg date that I am
aware of is 8 Jan. 1941.
If you have a visual confirmation of the young on this
date then we might have a really great Tennessee breeding record.
I don't not know anything about Great Horned Owl nests with eggs in
December in Tennessee but it is not a far-fetched possibility.
Some authors have reported Great Horned Owl eggs as early as
November in the deep south. Florida has
egg dates in December as does South Carolina. Alabama had young
in the nest by Dec 23. Louisiana had young out of the nest by Feb. 18
which clearly could have been extremely early winter egg dates. I don't
have the most up-to-date records for these states.
Good luck and let us hear more about what you can nail down.
Let's go birding......
Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
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