Screech Owl Fledglings In Newburyport, MA

One of my main goals lately has been to find and photograph a family of screech owls. Eastern screech owls tend to fledge in either May or June, so time was beginning to run out, and I was starting to worry that I would have to wait another year to be able to see them. 

UPDATE ON FRAMINGHAM SCREECH OWLS:

My original plan was to work with my friend Etienne to find the nest of our local screech owls in Framingham. I did a post on one of them linked here: Photographing The Eastern Screech Owl. We did have some success. Over the course of the spring, the pair moved over to another hole, which was further into the woods, this time in a pine tree, which was producing lots of sap around the owl's hole.

Of course, as soon as we started to assume that they would nest in this new cavity, they were evicted by a pair of nesting gray squirrels. There is lots of competition for good tree cavities at this time of year.

The female decided to start roosting in another cavity, which is very tight, is surrounded by branches and very hard to photograph, and I've only ever seen Etienne's photos of her so far. The male has returned to his winter cavity, that I saw him in earlier in the year...

It was beginning to become clear that the Framingham pair has either failed to raise young, or had already completed raising young. I had to look to other locations.

NEWBURYPORT, MA

On June 5th, I received a tip about a pair of screech owls. I had drove to this spot before, to photograph the adults, with no luck. I was told that they had already fledged 3 chicks, and that there were still 3 chicks in the nesting cavity. I hoped to take photos of the next chicks fledging at dusk. As I got off the highway, and drove along the road, next to a salt marsh, I started noticing lots of figures in the grass. Great egrets, canada geese, cormorants, and gulls were all feeding at the water's edge. Just as I was about to turn right, and head to the screech owl's hole, I noticed a pair of very large birds, perched out on a small island. Eagles! I pulled over as fast as I could, and ran to take photos. I did not know how skittish they would be, so I slowly crept through the grass toward them.

After a few minutes, one of them (probably the male) took flight. I thought that it was my fault at first, even though I was still a good distance away.

I was releived to know that it was only chasing away an intruding juvenile eagle, and then it returned to sit with it's mate.

I then walked back to my car, and accidentally flushed an egret.

I then drove to the site of the screech owl's nest. I found a juvenile almost immediately, because there was a cluster of photographers taking pictures from underneath. Since we still had about a half hour until sunset, the little guy was sound asleep.

One of it's parents was also asleep, in a cedar tree nearby, but it opened it's eyes slightly to check me out, before dozing off again. This was my first time seeing a brown morph screech owl.

A little bit later, the first fledgling began calling, and opened his eyes.

It's sibling also began calling, and climbing up a branch, nearby.

I realized that this was because their mom was on a higher branch, encouraging them to fly. It was absolutely working, and both chicks started working their way up the tree, to be with their mom.

She continued calling for a while, while moving around.

It was now getting pretty dark, the mosquitos had come out, and people started working their way over  to the main nesting cavity. As people slowed their shutterspeeds to under 1/50, the remaining chicks finally emerged. One of them seemed to dominate the cavity, and pushed its siblings down below, out of view. It was still shy, because it still wasn't dark enough for it to feel comfortable sticking it's entire body out of the hole.

Eventually, it worked it's way up, into view, and started looking around, alert. It gave a glance at everything that moved, including it's mom, off in the distance, some bats that were hunting next to the tree, and the photographers.

...After I took that photo, my camera battery died. I had not charged it in a few nights, so I packed up my camera and tripod, and just watched their activity for the rest of the evening. 2 of the remaining owls did fledge that night, after 20 minutes of hesitation, and climbing around the hole.