I saw this photo a while back, but Dale Drinnon got ahold of it and
got some opinion in on it. Since I had come to the tentative
conclusion that the 'mothman' sightings were of a giant owl and
possibly of the old world variety which does exist I am pleased that
others came to this conclusion just by looking at the picture.
It is clearly rare enough but that is hardly due to any lack of food.
There is a near infinite supply of rabbits out there to feed no end
of giant owls and plenty of full skirted evergreens to hide in during
daytime. What is unusual is that it is flying during daylight and
over a city. They may be overcoming their natural fears and
succumbing to curiosity. Thus a sample of one is meaningless in
terms of estimating the population.
Understanding their niche actually opens the door to huge populations
even though we can hardly credit that at all. A nocturnal hunter
that needs perhaps a couple hundred square miles of hunting ground
can have a huge population in the Eastern US.
Giant Owls and
Mothman
"Mothman in
Manhattan"
Recently this photo
has been circulating around Facebook again and I posted a copy of it
on my wall. After a good deal of discussion the consensus of opinion
is that seems to be a very large bird of pretty much conventional
conformation and not a kite or a model of any sort. Unfortunately
there is no good way of determining the scale on a photo of this, but
it seems to be quite large. Several commentators have mentioned that
it does not look so much like a hawk or eagle but it does resemble
some sort of an enormous owl, especially at the head end.
No comments:
Post a Comment