As some of you probably gathered from Monday’s post, I was a little surprised at some of the birds I found on my recent trip to Quogue. My biggest surprise was finding this little guy sitting on a bale of hay in the middle of an open field.

Now I have to admit owls are a new species for me. I have been in search of a Great Horned Owl for 6 months now and still have not found one. So if you think my identification is incorrect, please let me know. It seemed to me that my identification came down to 3 possibilities, Short Eared Owl, Barred Owl and Northern Saw-whet Owl. What led me to my conclusion was the face. This owl has yellow eyes so we can scratch off the Barred Owl and the facial features and overall size to me rule out the Northern Saw-whet Owl.

I’m still not sure how I was able to see this owl given I was driving and it was about 100 yards away from where I made these images. I suspect that he was in that field sitting on the hay bale waiting for some unsuspecting million dollar house mouse to come by!

Images captured by D3x, 600 VRII wTC-2.0E III on Lexar UDMA digital film