Great Horned Owl

You never know what you might see when you work outdoors in nature, and yesterday was a great example of why I have my camera along almost all the time! My coworker Scott and I were driving back the lane to the hog lagoon we are monitoring when a big bird flew out of the corn along the lane. I had no idea what it was... it didn't fly like any of the more common large birds. When we got back to the lagoon, it was standing guard over one of our instruments. It was a good distance away, and I didn't realize what it was until I zoomed in and took some photos. The owl apparently roosts on our 60 foot tower to hunt and has been around for a while, since a few weeks ago Scott had found an owl pellet (which he thought was a very large animal dropping until today) near the top of the tower. If you don't know what an owl pellet is check out this link: http://www.kidwings.com/owlpellets/index.htm