Beautiful!

Great shot! Impressive you were able to get so close before he took off.

Thank you, I was pretty surprised as well, this was taken with my iPhone as I was out following deer tracks. Brought the rifle instead of the DSLR.

Nice find! Could be a Northern saw-whet.

That camouflage is amazing.

I hear these all the time. Never end up spotting them.

Northern saw whet! Very rare to see

r/superbowl material right here

Man I read that as super bowl and not superb owl. Did me a confuse.

What a wonderful photo. Thank you for sharing.

Natural camouflage is so wild. Couldn't see him for first couple seconds.

there really needs to be an owl identification subreddit called r/hooareyou

Good catch!

great shot! i don't know much about owls but have noticed some of them (barred owl???) will just stare back at you from not very far away if they don't fly away first.

The fact that it’s not r/ Super Bowl is amazing.

Now that's a sweet saw whet 😎

That’s pretty cool to know, just looked them up and they’re definitely one of the calls I’ve heard at night around the house.

Yes the superb owl.

They sound a little like a dump truck backing up.

They are a boreal species generally, without long evolutionary history alongside humans and are generally unafraid. At times you can walk up to them and pick them off a branch. When you band them, they will happily pose on your shoulder or top of your head and purr when stroked (ok that last part isn't true). Amazingly charismatic critters

Great find! Saw-whets are an amazing little owl and incredibly charismatic. They are also readily captured during migration and are a common research species. I'd encourage folks to check out North Branch Nature Center during their fall saw-whet banding season (unfortunately just wrapped up for 2022). You'll never forget seeing one up close, kids love them, etc

Interesting... So is this guy lost? Blown in with the weather? Or do they move south to VT for the winter?

They breed in the state, in bogs and higher elevation forests, but their numbers are augmented in winter by birds coming from the north. Their migration was somewhat unknown until just the past few decades. And their feathers glow under a UV light!

Thanks for all of this, the mrs and I have been watching videos about them on YouTube now 😂. I’ll have to check the banding out next year as I’m over that way riding bikes a lot anyway.

Very cool! You won't regret it!