My owl friends: Owl update, etc.

I decided to stop by to see my owl friends last night. Sonny was snoozing in his
favorite spot. He soon woke up, did a bit of stretching and then flew over to the big dead tree. I was losing the light fast but managed to get this pic. He sat there for over 15 minutes. He kept hooting for Cher but she ignored him.

She was on the nest as usual. I was hoping she would fly out for a break but it didn't happen while I was there.

The owlets probabably have hatched by now but I didn't hear a "peep" out of them.
So we're still waiting to see who the new owlets are.....

I love seeing great horned owls, so I decided to head back to Bear Creek Park to find some GHOs. There had been a few posts about a few pairs of GHOs in this park. I went down a couple of weeks ago to find the owls but had no luck. So I was hopeful I'd see them today.
The park was nice and quiet when I got there. I headed down the path where the owls were last seen but no luck AGAIN! I was getting frustrated when I spotted two people walking towards me. They had binoculars around their necks...Yeah! Birders! I bet they had seen the owls. Nope! They were looking for them too but had not seen them. I continued walking on when I heard them call me. I looked back and they had a ranger with them. Sweet! She was gonna show us where the nest was. So we finally located the nest. It was an old cooper's hawk nest and it was pretty high up, so you could barely see the owl's tail feathers hanging over the nest.
I wasn't able to get any decent photos but I made a mental note of this nest. Once the owlets are branchers, I bet I can get some nice pics!
We looked around for the male owl but didn't find him. So we're standing around chatting and about 8 crows show up in a nearby tree and they are making a huge ruckus.
Ha! Thanks to the crows we were able to spot the male GHO. It wasn't possible to get a pic but it was cool to spot him, finally!

So finally I pulled myself away and walked around a bit more. It was pretty quiet except for this guy! This is a townsend's solitaire. Pretty handsome,huh?

I decided to pop over to my favorite spot to see what was going on. Again it was pretty quiet but I did see the great blue heron. It looked like he had a fish caught in his throat and he was trying to swallow it....