Owl Release and Night Hike at Nishna Bend

Tonight at Nishna Bend, there was a Night Hike and they released two rehabilitated owls into the wild.

The best photo I could get in the dark with my camera, which is not very good:

The owls they released were both barred owls (so called because of the stripes across their feathers), an adult male and a young female. This picture shows the female right before she took off.

The hike was a short loop around a pond. The naturalist had placed baits of food around the trail and powder that would show up with a black light. The idea was to attract animals to walk in the piles of powder so that they'd make tracks that we could see with black light flashlights.

We did see a lot of tracks and they were almost all raccoon (above). The others were possum (below). We were hoping there might have been beaver or deer, but evidently they are too clever to walk in a pile of weird powder.