Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Who Cooks For You?

Barn owls like coming into the yard at night. They come at around 18 hours – it is just starting to get dark…that’s six o’clock! Here, when the hour hand goes around, the second time it goes around it’s 12, 13, 14….up to 24, then it starts all over again in the morning at 1!

We think the Owls just come after our dinner because we go outside and look for them and we listen for them and …we see them! The wings are totally quiet but their call is noisy. They are supposed to say “who cooks for you….who cooks for you all” but we haven’t heard that yet! (This is probably because it's actually the barred owl not the barn owl that 'says' this!)

Our neighbors, Janice, Hans and Dayo, brought us an owl pellet from their yard because they know we like to think these are 'our' owls. An owl pellet is something that the owl eats then it takes all the left over stuff it has eaten and it makes it into a ball inside its body and….it spits it out, then your neighbor finds it in the garden! We have found one in our parking space – and it looks like the same but it looks like someone has driven over it.


The owl pellet that Dayo brought over. It was a broken ball
shape a little bigger than a quarter around. It was dry and light.

Down our street is someone named Nikki - remember Nikki at Number 34? She showed us how to soak the owl pellet in water and take it apart gently with sticks.

We took it apart and it seemed that one of the bones inside the owl pellet was kind of like a mouse because it didn’t look like a bird and it was as small as your fingernail on your thumb if you are a five year old.

We found a skull (above) , some leg bones, back bones (vertebrae), ribs, lots of fur and a few feathers. And we think there was something else in there that came from the feathers…OR the mouse was bringing the feathers home to make a nest and instead... the owl ate it! A mouse can’t have a feather sticking out of it!

The bones we found - some were so tiny!

Lilayi

Bushbuck look so cute. You will see a picture. I got to get super close without it running away. It wanted to get to the garden to eat some plants! One of the guys told me I could get a little bit closer. I got so it was like one foot away from me! It looked like it was going to bump its horns at me.

I saw it at Lilayi walking around the reception office. We went on a drive there and had lunch and went on a walking safari. The walk was like three hours and the drive was one hour--but it seemed like two. We didn’t see as much but we some new animals – Eland (daddy actually ate some of for lunch! It’s crazy!), hartebeest, crested eagle, zebras and vervet monkeys.