From Paul J Marcotte
Thank you to The Estes Park News for using my Red Morphed Eastern Screech Owl as this week's cover shot.
Lovely shot, but sadly I didn't notice any article about it in the newsletter, just local town business and such.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Pythons climb trees I believe? That could land them an egg or a pre-fledged birdy.
I am always happy to share any knowledge with you guys! You were pretty close, but for the silent letter, and your usage was correct, so I thought you did well using a word you weren't totally sure of.
Hah yeah, its a term I've used in speech for like 20 years... and then I realized I've never actually bothered to learn how to put it in writing properly.
But anyway, yeah, constrictors do often go for sleeping birds or nests in the wild, but I've not seen or heard of one ever like... aggressively attack an otherwise cogent and aware bird, that isn't already badly crippled or something.
They're subtle, not fast.
... Like the slow blade that passes through the personal shield in Dune.
As opposed to many other kinds of snakes, that will make very rapid, precise, aggressive attacks.
So I'm just having trouble trying to imagine how anything resembling a 'fair fight' would go between a constrictor and roughly comparably sized owl.
The owl can fuck up the constrictor with talons and maybe its beak, but getting that close puts it act extreme risk of being enveloped or getting a limb cruppled, and the owl is, imo, unlikely to do so much damage that it would seriously affect the constrictor, unless it is extremely peristent and also lucky.
Owl beaks are fairly weak from what I hear, but the talons are really set up to deliver some extreme leverage with some daggers for good measure. If it could return the squeeze so to say, it might give the snake second thoughts, especially if it gets a good poking in the process. Like you said though, I assume any healthy owl would just nope out of there before the snake could do its thing.
Alright, I'm glad we agree, and as representatives of our patron species, have established the logical framework for at least a general non aggression pact, lol.