Owl on the prowl?

Have you seen one of these around Beacon Hill lately? Photo by mybulldog via Creative Commons/Flickr.
Neighbor Paul Zilly writes:

My brother and I were taking our morning run a couple of weeks ago, and my hat was snatched off of the top of my head mid-stride by what I believe to be a great horned owl! The incident took place at 6:30 AM on Cheasty Blvd .S. at the southeast end of the golf course. Neither of us saw the perpetrator at the time—we just heard a faint swooping sound behind us. I felt something glance off of the side of my head, and my hat was gone. We initially thought it was a crow since we had seen a family of crows at that same spot a couple of days before. But yesterday, we saw the marauder close up. It was huge—a beautiful owl, two-feet tall. It had just flown into a tree directly behind us, perhaps ready to strike again? I’m wondering if anyone else in the neighborhood has had a similarly eerie and quite wonderful experience.

5 thoughts on “Owl on the prowl?”

  1. We recently rescued an injured Saw Whet owl from our block – s/he couldn’t fly and was being circled by cats. At the advice of the animal shelter, we captured him and brought him to a local shelter.

  2. My husband and I pulled into our driveway a few weeks ago and saw something sitting on our mailbox. Sure enough, it was a big brown owl having a stare down with our cat in the front window. He must have sat on the mailbox for 10 minutes, until it finally flew over to another spot in our yard. It was just about dusk. We live up over near Jefferson park.

  3. By the top of the Hanford stairs, a the edge of the greenbelt I was swooped upon by an owl twice at about 6:00 around December 19th. Very stealth – quite beautiful. I thought the bird was scoping out my small dog being walked. The owl I saw did not have two tufts on the sides of its head – it was very white with some tan in it.

  4. My husband was “swooped” at about a month ago as he walked down mt. Loop road which is the southern part of Cheasty park on his way to the light rail at Columbia City. It sounded like a cool experience. The owl then flew up to sit on a light post.

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