Exciting night! I was just about to sleep when I heard a western screech owl just outside the bedroom window! Much to the amazement of the bird expert who alerted me to it, it had been recently spotted in our neighborhood just this past month by another birder.
What makes this is so unusual is that these owls normally live only in the woods up in the mountains in L.A., away from people and urban areas. You can see this clearly in the map of reported sightings that I captured from ebird.org; my report from last night is the lonely one in orange near Beverly Hills. Blue reports are older; the one closest to it in blue dates back to 1949! The expert had said "I suppose it is a dispersing hatch-year bird looking for a place to settle in."
What makes this is so unusual is that these owls normally live only in the woods up in the mountains in L.A., away from people and urban areas. You can see this clearly in the map of reported sightings that I captured from ebird.org; my report from last night is the lonely one in orange near Beverly Hills. Blue reports are older; the one closest to it in blue dates back to 1949! The expert had said "I suppose it is a dispersing hatch-year bird looking for a place to settle in."
I didn't get a good look at the bird, but got to see it fly out of the tree it was in (outside my immediate neighbor's backdoor). Having never seen one before, I was surprised to see it was quite small, only about 8 inches or so.
Oh, and I could record its soft calls that are comprised of a rapid series of "bouncing ball" whistles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aoXS_C5SbA&feature=plcp
Oh, and I could record its soft calls that are comprised of a rapid series of "bouncing ball" whistles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aoXS_C5SbA&feature=plcp
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