[masraum]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Their silent swoop is amazing. I have a couple of Great Horned hooters in the forest here and on cold evenings I can hear them calling.

My mom used to live in the woods in the FL panhandle. She had several folks including a cop tell her that she had an enormous owl living near her place. The cop said it was the biggest owl that he'd ever seen. She had a bird feeder in the front yard. There was a pipe in the ground and then the pipe that the bird feeder was on fit about 1' down into the pipe. She was pretty sure that raccoons would try to get the bird seed at night.

One night she was asleep with the windows cracked. She heard a loud, deep noise, twice, like whump, whump, then nothing. Then a few seconds later, she heard a really loud crash. It scared the poop out of her. She left the doors and windows shut and stayed in bed. The next morning when she got up, the bird feeder was laying on the ground 10' from where it was normally sticking up out of the ground and covered in blood.

Her assumption is that the big owl took off (two big wing flaps at launch) and then soared down and grabbed a raccoon or baby raccoon that was on the bird feeder and when it flew off with the raccoon, took the bird feeder with it a short way.