The Great Horned Owls are some of the most stunning wildlife I’ve been observing in Forest Park.

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Since we couldn’t catch sight of the Great Horned Owls in Forest Park in the morning, Malvika and I met up with

Mark Glenshaw

in the evening at the Boat House in Forest Park:

From across the road, in the stand of Cottonwood trees, at full zoom, I could see Charles, the male Owl:

As we walked closer, the fading sunlight showed Charles with his wings opened in what I call “opening the coat”, an effort to keep cool in the nearly 100 deg F heat :

A few more steps, wondering if we might disturb him:

Closer we came:

We then went over to our right, where Sarah was perched atop another tree:

We got some views of her:

We then circled around, and went into, the wooded area, looking for Dalton and Monica, but though we started hearing one of them vocalizing to the parents for food, we could not see them in the gathering dusk, and the heavy foliage.

However, I took this short video to show just how far away Charles actually was!

And here’s the wooded area, that we walked around in, with the fireflies twinkling in the dusk:

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I was rather worried about chiggers and ticks (indeed, I do have a few bites which are itching abominably now) so we didn’t stay too long past dusk, and Malvika dropped both Mark and myself at our respective homes….I mut thank her, because otherwise, walking home from Forest Park after dark is a little iffy, safety-wise…and the temperature had not come down at all; we were all sticky and sweaty when we got into Malvika’s car afterwards!