I went back over to the green belt to check on the baby owls today. They are doing well, but two of them are a little reluctant to leave the nest.

Mama and a big bundle of feathers, to the right, were spotted first.

Mama kept prying up bark. My husband asked if it could be some animal that she was pulling apart, but she never seemed to eat it.

One of the baby owls has left the nest. I’m not quite going to say that it has truly fledged, more like it was exercising it’s wings and got carried away — literally.

Here is the almost fledgling stretching and flapping on a branch. You can see that it’s flight feathers are well developed, but it still has a lot of baby down elsewhere.

A man was on the trail beneath the nest, watching these two in the tree across the creek and making notes. He mentioned that there was still one baby up in the nest. Sure enough — there it was!

I specifically asked what happened to the third chick, and he just shrugged.

I went around to the other side of the nest tree, and saw another little head poking up. All was well! Still three chicks!

One of the things that I love about this site is that it is RIGHT ON the trail, and lots of people know about the nest. As I met them on the trail, they stopped me and told me about the owls, wanting to share this really cool thing that they’ve seen. What a great way to get people excited about birds!