I applaud the owl giving its owl to the effort of getting food.
We found a barred owl sitting on the ground in the woods. One of its eyes was injured. We took it to a professor we knew who specialized in birds/raptors. He said that a raptor who is even slightly injured just shuts down and will not fly. He kept the owl and let it heal and released it.
We have a barred owl that flies through our backyard pretty much every evening at dusk. Sometimes we’re sitting on the deck and I play my phone app for it and it responds. Don’t do this during nesting season but this time of year, “its a hoot.”
I had something very similar happen to me while night fishing on a small pond in Massachusetts!
A barred owl grabbed my plug off the surface and got tangled. Luckily the hook popped loose after I lifted him into the boat but I was gearing up for some nasty hand to talon combat before it did. The now-freed owl hopped up unto the gunwale and gave me a dirty look before flying off into the trees.
I didn’t have a camera and there wouldn’t have been enough moonlight for a good video anyway. The only proof I had was a feather I found in the bottom of the boat the next day.
So yeah, I believe this guy’s story. Absolutely!
Good thing he did get it on tape because with that shirt and hat people would have just slapped another asterisk up next to that story. ;-)
Kinda funny to see a Pats fan in Texas. LOL
My big bird story is not about an owl. Today on my morning run while passing through a sort of lowland meadow filled with golden rod, I heard a loud “Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.” above & a little behind. I looked around and saw a low flying great blue heron changing flight direction. Apparently it had just taken off in my direction from the just out of sight gravel pit along side my running trail and became frightened when it spotted me. It didn’t vocalize, but sometimes they leave out a primitive type of call if they are chased up out of the water.