Daytime Hunting of Barred Owl (Strix varia)

On April 16th 2011, a barred owl glided over my head while I was filming something else along the Orange Trail of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens, GA. Hunting during daytime indicates that this individual has extra mouths to feed. You can hear the altruistic alarm calls of other nervous birds and rodents. The high pitched alarm call (of a chipmunk?) is particularly audible immediately before each move of the owl. I deliberately kept the scenes long with minimal cuts to reflect these sounds.

Orange Trail follows a stream and this owl was quite observant of something in the stream. I at first assumed it make a dive for a fish but my guess wasn’t right. At 4 minutes into the video you can see the prey (hint: it is a crustacean).