What does a great horned owl have to do to get some peace and quiet? Amazingly, we sometimes see him (we think this is a male) being taunted by animals who could easily become an afternoon snack.
In this video you can see the owl being heckled by a squirrel, a titmouse, and even a hawk – either just for sport or to try to make him leave. The squirrel, surely now a paid-up member of the Daredevils’ Club, even turned his back on the owl and lay on the branch, just to make an “I’m not afraid of you” point.
Ultimately, the owl did leave, and a gray fox later climbed the tree and took a precarious nap on his perch, seemingly unafraid that the owl might return and want his branch back. For the fox, it would not have been a good place to engage in a fight since he was about 25′ above a solid rock creek bed.