ML628376098

Observation details

Incredible experience! We drove out not really expecting to find this bird, with both John and Daniel telling us that it is a super hard bird to find and we prolly won't see it. We tried listening at one spot on the road for 5-10 minutes and both Paul and John thought they heard it, so we moved off 50 yards away and they could still maybe hear something but it was soo far away, so we thought maybe we hadn't triangulated it right and the bird could have been 180º the other way. So we headed back past the cars and played the tape again, and honestly I was falling asleep a little but all of a sudden the bird responded with the tooting series call we had been playing, super close. We all reacted electrically and moved towards the call with the light and John spotted it almost immediately perched about 20' away on an upright trunk. Incredible looks at the bird, larger all rufous brown screech-owl without ear tufts or facial disk mark, brown eyes that shone red-purple in the light. After 5-10 minutes it flew off but only 10 meters or so and we found it again and enjoyed more views before we left it in peace and walked away. Check out the BirdFun youtube channel in the next 6-24 months for a video lol make sure to smash that like button and subscribe for our boy Udo.