A Kelowna woman out for a walk with her dog says she got a little too close to nature after a fly-by incident with an owl.
Sarah Michaud says she was walking her German shepherd at Kelowna's newest waterfront park at the corner of Abbott Street and Cedar Avenue Monday evening when she was dive-bombed by an owl.
"The owl swooped really low over my dog. I thought 'oh my gosh' it must have thought my dog was something else," Michaud says.
According to Dale Belvedere, manager of the South Okanagan Rehabilitation Centre for Owls in Oliver, owls aren't typically interested in pets including small dogs and cats and an incident like this doesn't happen very often.
"Not common at all! The only thing I can think of is it may have had prey on the ground and they startled it," Belvedere said.
The incident happened around 8:30 p.m., Monday and Michaud says she could feel the owl's presence and felt like the raptor was watching her and her dog.
"I walked up, filming this owl. I couldn't get my camera to focus. But I just had this super eerie feeling like the way it was watching me and my dog, but especially my dog, it was like this really intense, like menacing expression, like it was gonna fly at us again," said Michaud.
Belvedere believes the dog and Michaud may have interrupted the owl while it was either feeding or hunting.
"These poor birds in this cold, they're having trouble finding their food. And when they do, you know, they want it. These owls don't go after humans, they don't go after big dogs, they don't even go after cats, that's all a myth. It was probably just trying to scare them away."
"It obviously had prey on the ground or knew there was prey on the ground. If it was seriously going after the dog, which I highly doubt it would have been on its back. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Belvedere says.
Michaud believes the bird was a great horned owl, which is plentiful in British Columbia and highly skilled predators who typically hunt between dawn and dusk.
Despite the frigid temperatures, Belvedere says these birds know how to protect themselves, "they fluff themselves up, they get as close to the trunk of the tree as they can where it's warmer out of the wind."
Last week SORCO sent out a message letting people know that "the owl's are alright."
"I know the public is concerned, I understand that, but they're fine. I have birds down here (Oliver) right now in pens, which are open pens and they're surviving," Belvedere said.
