For about three weeks, we had not seen any trace of the owl that had taken up residence in our owl house. I suspected that its eggs had hatched but had no evidence of it.
In the past when there were owlets in the house, they would often poke their heads out during the day or I could lure them out with my closest approximation to the call of an eastern screech owl. However, this year, we had not seen a thing . . . until just this week.
This little guy popped out during the day, and we were able to take this shot. Surprisingly, he is pretty mature. He looks to be about three or four weeks old to me. I cannot believe that we completely missed seeing him when he was younger with baby fuzz feathers.
I know this must be the baby, because the mother had reddish brown feathers as you can see from this older photograph from earlier in the year:
In the two previous years, we had twins in each year. This year, it appears that only one owlet hatched and survived. To see a photograph of last year's owlets taken at a much younger age, proceed to this link.
