Western Screech Owl

A visit to the Cascades Raptor Center, Eugene Oregon

Western Screech Owl Megascops kennicottii

The Cascades Raptor Center of Eugene, Oregon is a bird sanctuary for injured and disabled birds. A friend of ours was working there, so we headed up the hill one weekend to see her and the bird that she was in charge of. I shot an entire roll of film that day, but this shot of a screech-owl (which was not our friend’s bird) is the only one that I have digitized right now.

This little guy is tiny. It is perched on a gloved hand and as you can see, it isn’t much bigger than the human hand it is resting on. It was calm but attentive while I was shooting it, making little chirps but seemed otherwise unconcerned. I don’t know why it was at the raptor center, but the fact that it was being handled by a human, and was brought out in the presence of humans, indicate that it could never return to the wild.

I felt honored that it allowed me to photograph it.