owls

Look what they rescued from behind a fireplace in Randolph today.

Good Morning Gloucester posts a nice photo of a snowy owl, with a sad coda:

I took this photo yesterday in Rockport – Magnificent creature! By this morning, he had died in the same place – just tragic! The Animal Control Officer who came to collect him said often owls ingest rodents that have been poisoned – please ask your readers to re-think using poison.

On Prince Street, WCVB reports. Another photo.

Because some of them were recordings.

Sarita reports on a pre-dawn birding count in Jamaica Plain that involved cranking up a loudspeaker playing "screech owl trills" to try to attract the birds:

Today's Screech owl count was 8, which is a very respectable number. The two first I didn't see, but they both were attracted to the sound from our speaker and vocalized through the dark. The third and fourth ones I eventually got to see - they started tussling with each other up a tree and tumbled down to the ground. Number five we heard from a close distance. ...

The Proper Bostonians reports on the scene in the Public Garden, where owl watchers and photographers converged this evening to watch an owl in a beech tree (right near the fountain/statue that shows a mountain lion catching an owl):

A few more owl-watchers showed up as the light faded, having heard rumors from a bearded guy named Peter. As we talked and craned our necks, the owl finally took off, and we followed on the ground, exclaiming over the magnificence of its wings as it swooped through the trees. It landed on a high branch that gave us a much better view of its yellowish beak and dark, round eyes. Barred owls have beautiful brown, camouflage feathers and we had an excellent view of it now. Behind us, a group of serious photographers with massive telephoto lenses had materialized, setting up lights and tripods. One trained a spotlight on the owl. This troubled my owl-watcher friend and me, but the owl didn't seem to care. It stayed put and suddenly regurgitated a lump of whatever owls regurgitate... feathers, fur and bone fragments, I think.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Hoot was too badly hurt to be saved.

The MBTA reports workers found this owl huddled near Waban station on the Green Line this morning and named him Hoot, before transporting him to a local animal hospital.

Earlier:
Owl removed from Park Street station.

Or maybe we're just noticing these stealthier predators after years of paying attention to their flashier, daytimier cousins, the hawks. The above is not some impressionist painting of what an owl might look like, but an impressionist-like photo of an owl in a tree near Sullivan Square in Somerville on Saturday night, taken by Bill Ritchotte. "Hedwig?" he asks.

Then there's this owl in the Fens.

Earlier:
An owl in the Park Street T stop and one in East Boston.

Rob Watson photographed a "vaguely foreboding owl hanging out" above a Park Street exit tonight. A very real and alive, if vaguely foreboding, owl, he assures us.