on Powerful Owls

["Overs, Anthony \(REPS\)" <>]

Well, what a weekend!

I hope everyone has had a chance to see the Powerful Owl at the ANBG. It is still there today, although s/he is perched in a taller, more densely crowned paperbark just up the garden bed from the tree it was in yesterday.

If you haven’t seen the bird, it is in Section 12. Walk around the front of the café and north past the row of offices, continue straight ahead for about 100m to where the path bends right. Look up to your left into the tall paperbark. You can’t miss it.

Now for some stories!

On Saturday 28 April I led a COG trip to Tallaganda State Forest to look for a Powerful Owl. A group of 21 people were present on the night. To my surprise, and to the group’s disappointment, we did not see an owl, nor did we even hear one. A tad demoralising. I managed to call in a Powerful Owl on the trip last year for everyone present to see, but failure this time knocked my success rate down to 50 per cent.

After some rather persistent badgering to go to Tallaganda again, a group of five went out to the forest on Saturday 12 May. This time we found a bird, and in fact, heard two other birds while watching one!

About twelve hours later, 9.15 Sunday morning, I led a group of beginners on a COG walk through the ANBG. We’d only been going for ten minutes when my attention was drawn to two blackbirds and a Satin Bowerbird, all making alarm calls and generally being loud. We walked along to the spot to see what the commotion was about. I looked up to see a large lump of a bird perched about five metres above the edge of the path. It was the Powerful Owl. I was shocked. After going to so much effort to find one out in the forest, one presents itself at close range right in the middle of town. I quickly impressed upon the beginners that this was a rare sighting for Canberra and an obviously very impressive bird. Where do you go from there for a group of beginners? The yellow robins, spinebills and fairy-wrens just didn’t seem to measure up after that.

One of those amazingly freakish birding moments.

Cheers

Anthony