Look, I don’t know how to break this to you, but that’s not actually an owl. It’s something in the cat family, maybe a bobcat. It’s still cute, but feline cute, not avian cute.
yep - our cats look just like that as well. I always call our huge female siamese an Owl cuz she looks just like one sometimes. 
I’ve only got about another week to photograph them…they’ll fledge in a week or two…
Have to tout the Pennsylvania Falcon Cam, on a ledge on the Rachel Carson Office Building in Harrisburg.
Of course, right now it’s dark…
Neat pics! I gotta ask, is there anything one can do to encourage owls to take up residence? I realize where I live is probably not the best place for owls, but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life here, and whenever I do find a place to nail my hat down, I’d like to have some owls about.
Well great horned owls are pretty much the top of the food chain around here. They do not build their own nests, they always take over the nest of another raptor - Usually a hawks nest or an Osprey Pole. The one in the photos has taken over the nest of a Red Shouldered Hawk.
In your own backyard you can place Owl boxes for the smaller screech owls to nest in as they are cavity nesters, as are saw whet owls and most other small owl species.
For the bigger guys like Great horned and Barred Owls, waaaay up in the top of the canopy of a large oak or mulberry or other large tree, you can try to place a platform. I’ve seen folks in known greathorned territory place platforms way up there to attract hawks. Then if you get a hawk pair, chances are an owl will take over the following early April late march.
BTW - Sometimes the takeover by a great horned can be forced and they will actually eat the hawks sitting on young…:eek:
Also, a good way to find an owl is to look for crows all congregated in one area squalking at something, it’s a mobbing behavior that they do when they find a nest or an individual owl…
A pair of Great Horned Owls (I was told that was what they were) lived in an oak tree about three hundred yards from a place I lived in South Dakota. I only saw them together once, though.
Adult Great Horned Owls are so well camouflaged you can be looking directly at one against the trunk of a tree and not know what the heck you are looking at. When we go to visit the owls in my post above, the mother leaves the nest almost immediately as soon as we get there, and themost fascinating thing about that, is she will leap off the nest, and you can watch her directly…she will dissappear into the woodland behind in a matter of seconds. No noise, no nothing…she just automatically get’s consumed by the forest. Very cool stuff.
One of the things that enables Owls to be such great hunters is their nosieless flight, unlike other birds whose feathers are sleek, an owls feathers are frayed that the ends, this enables them to be silent when they flap down to make a kill. It’s amazing to whitness in real life.
When I was young, we had a family of Great Horned owls living in a big tree in my backyard. If I sat very, very still, sometimes an adult would land in the grass. It was fascinating to sit and watch them! I envy you.
I’m going to check them out again right now, I’ll come back and post a few pics.
Only question - why are you waiting til Memorial Day?
UPDATE WITH HIGH REZ SHOTS
I went down this morning and got some high rez shots of all three and the mother.
Here is mom. and here.
And here are the three little guys. One , two , three , four , five , six . Enjoy. I did. 
Cuz, it’s a tad nippy yet…and my buddy who is a member at that club, is in Florida until Memorial Day.
I love owls.
When I was quite young, I was riding in the car with my parents at night and we came upon a small lump in the middle of a pile of feathers sitting in the middle of the road. My dad stopped the car and investigated, and he found the bump to be a stunned Northern Pygmy owl that had apparently been hit by another car.
We decided to try and rehabilitate it, and it stayed with us for a few months, using one of our old rabbit cages as a home. We would feed it hamburger by tying it to the end of a string and swinging/jerking it around while suspended in the cage until the owl would strike and eat. Dad would put on leather work gloves and periodically check the little guy/girl (I can’t recall) over for new feather growth until all of the lost plummage had been restored. While doing so he discovered it was the host of a flat fly parasite of some kind. We let it go and it flew away in seemingly good health, just like all of the other critters we took in and nursed back to health for later release through the years.
I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7 years old, and it is one of the experiences that influenced me to get my degree in Zoology, as well as being one of the experiences that has me often shaking my head at myself for selling my vocational soul to the internet after graduating.
Allow me to just say – SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Cute. (Wow, that’s a Silver Maple, right? Amazing how much later they come out up there.)
SO adorable!!! Those babies are fantastic. The parents are doing a great job feeding them!
Oh yes - there were a lot of Owl Pellets on the bottom of the tree as well as several carcai (sp?) [carcasses??] at the base of the trunk. They have been eating squirrel, hawk, and at least one juvenile raccoon.
I’m going to try and make it back for when they fledge, maybe sit there for a full morning and watch them glide on down to the forest floor. It’ll happen quick and most likely in one day.