Photo above: Barred Owl by Rex Guichard
By Kenneth Trease
You bet! I had seen posts on various sites about Barred Owls catching and eating crayfish but I had never witnessed it myself. So when a birding friend called and asked if I was interested in a trip to try and find these owls, I quickly seized the opportunity. My friend had photographed one of these owls the week before at Whatcom Falls Park in Bellingham. Whatcom Creek runs through the heart of this busy urban park and supports at least one pair of Barred Owls.
We arrived at the park at 8:00am to start our search. We slowly searched along both sides of the creek looking for owls. By lunchtime we had found two owls roosting quietly along the creek and mostly sleeping.
After lunch we split up and started searching both sides of the creek and would keep in touch by cell phone. About 3:00pm we found another owl roosting near the creek and he/she seemed to be eyeing the water a lot. Suddenly the owl flew down to the shoreline and appeared to be after some unseen prey - probably a small rodent - but came up empty. It returned to its perch for a few minutes before again flying - this time right down into the shallow creek.
When it flew to a nearby log it had a crayfish in its talons. We watched as it quickly ripped off the large front pincers and then swallowed the crayfish whole. We both got a few shots of this action but the deep shade and slow shutter speeds made for a lot of blurry shots.
About 15 minutes later the owl flew down to the creek and caught another crayfish. It flew back to the same log and proceeded to bite off the large pincers and swallow the rest of the crayfish whole.
I had just witnessed an amazing owl behavior that until recently I didn't even know existed. I had read some online sources indicating that Barred Owls in other parts of their range are known to catch and eat crayfish. Some owls can show a slight pink tinge on their breast feathers when a large part of their diet is crayfish. I did notice that the owls we saw that day had a very bright orange-yellow color on their feet. Although these photos don’t show it well, these owls also had a very bright orange cere (the bare fleshy area at the base of the bill). I think these bright colors may be due to their diet. It was a fantastic birding experience and one I would highly recommend. If you would like to try for these owls it will take a lot of patience. We spent almost the entire day waiting to see them fishing but it was well worth it.