Baby Owls Growing Up

Each morning when I take the first horse of the day to the arena to ride, I see the owlets just out of the nest and starting to explore their world.  The oldest one sits on top of the plywood in the corner, the middle one sits on a cross beam just below the nest, and the youngest sits just to the right of the nest.  The parents are usually around somewhere close in the indoor arena.  Yesterday Rizzo found one of the owlets on the ground, but it was behind a pallet so she didn't get to it.  As she stared at it, the owls started making a chirping/yodeling noise to warn her away.  The noise didn't phase the dog, but notified me and I was able to then call her off and tell her to leave it alone.

I feel so lucky to have these incredible birds at our place!  They are mostly a silent audience when I'm riding in the arena, but it's nice to have the company all the same.

This is the oldest baby, it's farthest from the nest and spends most of its time hanging out on this board, or snoozing behind it.

This is the middle child, nestled up fairly high in the rafters (so the cell phone pic isn't the greatest).  The youngest was too far away up by the nest for me to get a shot at it with just a cell phone camera.