I stopped by Glen Echo ravine this afternoon, a small ravine in north Columbus, near the State Fairgrounds.  There was running water in the creek, and the south face of the ravine had lost much of its snow & ice cover, but birding was mostly slow.  But I did run into a local woman who gave a perfect description of a Great Horned Owl she had seen the prior evening.  This is a very urban location for a GHOW, so it's likely that it was displaced there by the weather.  Alert to this, I located a cawing band of crows along the SE edge of the ravine, following them to a set of firs in a yard.  Finally, they flushed the bird past me; it was a Barred Owl, another unusual bird for so urban a location.  So it you are around Columbus tomorrow, you might want to be extra alert for owls, as the icy weather may be pushing them in-town.

We also had several posts about Columbus crow flocks over the past week.  As I watched the Barred owl fly past, a large flock of 200+ crows settled into the trees at the east end of the ravine.  The owl, perhaps sensing that there was worse to come than the small band that had harassed it so far, flew low into the ravine and dove right into a big crack in a large sycamore.  Within a few minutes, the crow flock ('murder'?) had grown to 400+, cawing and jousting in the treetops.  This was late afternoon, 4:15-ish, so I couldn't tell if it was a roost or just a staging area.  I didn't see any more crow flocks on the journey east across North Columbus on Weber Ave, so the roost may be close to Glen Echo.  Anyone around Glen Echo or the State Fairgrounds might look for big crow roosts over the next few days.

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