A photographer was hunting for a great grey owl to photograph in a Canadian forest when he happened to come across one that was perfectly blending into the bark of a tree with impressive camouflage.
James S. Batuigas, a 45-year-old amateur photographer based in Burnaby, Canada, was driving 5 hours to his favorite wildlife photography area in a British Columbia forest back in May when he encountered the owl.
“I was planning to look for the great grey owl that day,” Batuigas tells the UK newspaper
Daily Mail. “I was driving on a forest road searching for the great grey owls, scanning every tree hoping to find one during noontime, where they’re usually resting.
Origin
Photographs of “naked” owls ruffled the internet’s feathers even though the raptors appeared to lack their own.
Widely shared photos of the featherless skeletons of barn owls went viral in January 2017 when writer Dana Schwartz shared in a Twitter post what the nocturnal birds supposedly look like underneath it all. (Though the original tweet is now unavailable, it has been archived here for reference.)
Bet Lott, a raptor specialist at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, confirmed to Snopes that the above photograph does indeed show an owl without its feathers.
The owl in question is a barn owl scientific name Tyto alba known for its ghost-like appearance and rasping shrieks. Reaching a height of about a foot tall, barn owls are found on all six continents and particularly enjoy hanging out in barns in hopes of feeding on mice and rats, as the raptor’s name suggests. Because their hunting depends on stealth, the feathers on owls are specially adapted to hel
USA TODAY
NEW YORK – Becky DePorte was about 45 minutes outside the city when she got the text from a friend last Wednesday: A snowy owl was in Central Park.
DePorte – an avid bird-watcher – was then unaware a sighting of the owl hadn t been reported in Central Park in 130 years. At the time, she was in Rockefeller State Park Preserve with a friend who was looking for a pileated woodpecker, a bird she had seen plenty of times growing up in rural Pennsylvania. I really didn t care about a pileated woodpecker, she said. So she hopped in an Uber, and $60 and 45 minutes later, I was back in Central Park running to the ballfield with my camera.
What s True
It is true that a snowy owl was spotted in Central Park on Jan. 27, 2021, making it one of the most recent observations of the species in the area. One of the last and most well-known records of a snowy owl in the park occurred in 1890. What s False
It is not known with certainty whether this is the first spotting of a snowy owl in Central Park in over 130 years. What s Undetermined
Records indicate that a snowy owl was also seen in Central Park on March 6, 1993. However, no observer is listed, making it difficult if not impossible to verify the report.
Snowy owl seen in Central Park after 130 years, a rare spotting of an unpredictable Arctic bird Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY
Rare snowy owl spotted in New York s Central Park for first time in 130 years What to watch next
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NEW YORK – Becky DePorte was about 45 minutes outside the city when she got the text from a friend last Wednesday: A snowy owl was in Central Park.
DePorte – an avid bird-watcher – was then unaware a sighting of the owl hadn t been reported in Central Park in 130 years. At the time, she was in Rockefeller State Park Preserve with a friend who was looking for a pileated woodpecker, a bird she had seen plenty of times growing up in rural Pennsylvania.