Northern Hawk Owl 001

A friend mentioned that a Northern Hawk Owl has been hanging around Gooseberry Falls State Park for the last few weeks. Karla and I had an appointment in Duluth on Tuesday so I planned to stop at Gooseberry and try to get some photos. The nice thing about Northern Hawk Owls is that they feed during the day and let you get pretty close. After parking by the visitor center I followed the bike trail to Hwy 61 where the owl has been hanging out. It took me about 30 minutes to find the owl perched on a branch. It was moving its head back and forth listening for mice in the tall grass.

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I set up my tripod close to a spruce tree and started taking photos. I slowly opened the Velcro on my coat pocket to get the owl to look at me and it gave me a pretty inquisitive glance.

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After photographing the owl for about 10 minutes I was startled when it flew straight at me missing my head by just a few feet. It landed in a spruce tree right behind me. It didn’t take long to realize the reason why. The owl had cached a mouse on the limb of the spruce tree planning to come back and eat it later. Since I was standing close to the mouse it must have got nervous that I was going to eat its lunch. The mouse can be seen in the lower left corner of this photo.

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Within seconds the owl picked up the mouse, spun around and swallowed it head first.

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Here you can see the little feet of the mouse sticking out the side. I didn’t realize how big an owl’s tongue was until I saw it in this photo.

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After devouring its lunch it puffed up its feathers, flew over my head and landed on one of the highway signs.

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It’s amazing that an owl can hear a mouse running under the snow in the midst of all the highway noise.

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