Can you spot the owls? Look closely. They are there. At first, I also did not spot them. They are after all masters of disguise and for good reason.
Can you see them now? We walked down to the beach to listen to the waves and to take some photographs when two other people came down. They looked at the cliff and showed us the owls. Three, two babies, and probably the mom.
Now you can see them better. They are probably still very young. It is amazing to see them so up close. They are magnificent creatures we rarely see as they are always busy at night. Many nights we hear them, but we rarely see them.
The three did not like us hanging around so close by. I did not know that they would stay this low and close to the ocean. Then again, their favorite food lives close by... At the end of the post I will show their favorite food, but beware, it is not for the faint of heart.
See how close they are to the ocean in this short video I took:
But all along you might have wondered, where is the dad in all of this? We looked up. Can you spot him?
Fast asleep, or on the lookout for a quick nap. Are they not beautiful? I think we modern people do not appreciate the beauty of nature enough. Will people be more caring and empathetic if we appreciate the beauty of nature more?
These are Cape eagle-owl (Bubo capensis) and they actually live all over the country in South Africa. They are also living in some places in Africa. And they are very active hunters of small rodents and mammals.
And unfortunately, the reason why I think they are this low is to catch the newborn babies of the cape dassies (rock hyrax; Procavia capensis). Not 100 meters away, we found these cute little babies feasting on some of the green and lush vegetation. But then it struck me... these cute little babies are most likely the food of the owls.
And this is what our role is in all of this: we should not let our own greed and myopia take over our humanity. We should not kill the rodents in our garden because, in the end, they are the food of the owls. We will not kill the birds of prey and similar animals because of any direct act of violence. We will kill them because we killed all the bugs, all the weeds, and all the rodents. I always hear people say things like: Oh I wish all flies would die, but they do not know that birds live off of the larvae, and other similar animals live off of what we consider to be pests.
Our own short-sightedness will be our downfall.
In any case, I hope you enjoyed this post. All of the photographs and video is my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 300mm zoom lens, and iPhone. The musings are also my own, and if not, I hyperlinked them.
