Post #174422 by ZebraTiki on Sun, Jul 24, 2005 5:01 PM

There are barn owls all over my neighborhood. They were nesting in a spectacular Canary palm that was installed in front of a model home, and the nest lings were making a spectacular screamfest every dusk for weeks until they fledged. When the home was sold, the new owners took out that palm. I would've paid extra for an owl-housing palm tree! I still can't believe they took it out.

I've seen a great horned owl in the wild once, which landed about 6 feet away from me in a field. I know they're all over the place, because new neighbors are always "losing" their outdoor cats within weeks of letting them out at night.

There are the usual suspects in the area, kestrels, red-tailed hawks, quail, kildeer, barn swallows, but the most amusing are the wild turkeys. Last week a bunch of them (10 or so) were crossing a dangerous street, and most of the traffic was stopped, and a woman was trying to drive around them, and she was so busy trying to get around the turkeys (and causing a bigger traffic mess than the turkeys) that she didn't see the police car nearby. He pulled her over, and I hope gave her a ticket for whatever that category of driving falls under. "Counter-Effective Turkey Weaving" in morning rush hour?

There's an ongoing romance at my stable between a Bantam rooster (he's like a 'Mini Me' of a rooster, 1/4 the size of a turkey)) and a female wild turkey. When she sees him, she comes running out of the shrubs, and will bravely go past any person, horse, mule, cats, anything to follow him around.

The areas around me that have the turkeys have people of opposing viewpoints that dislike the turkeys, and then the other side that I refer to as the "turkey sympathizers", who put out trays of water for them in their backyards, and escape routes through their back fences and such. I can't believe anyone would complain about wildlife when they moved to the area partly because of the open spaces and trees.

I've nicknamed the hummingbird that is the most frequent to our feeder "Renaldo". If I leave the screen door open when I take the feeder in for cleaning and refilling, he darts into the house about 6 feet and out again to where the feeder hangs, scolding me the entire time. He also likes to perch on my passion flower vine at sunset, where he can dart up to the feeder and scare away other humminbirds... I suspect he has a drinking problem.