Any white moving object is likely to attract the attention of the great horned owl and bring on an attack.
A great horned owl was known to have struck the claws of both feet into the back of a large collie dog, perhaps misled by a white patch on the dog as the white on the back of a skunk, its favorite mark.
Another struck the head of a man who was riding on horseback at night through a large tract of woods while wearing a white beaver hat. The noiseless blow delivered such force that it took the man’s hat and scared the man to flee at top speed for about three miles.
Yet another instance happened in the autumn of 1918 when a man wearing a white canvas hat stepped out behind his cabin in the Wareham woods for a little gymnastic exercise and a great horned owl almost brushed his ear, probably spotting the moving hat in the moonlight from the top of some tall pine and shooting over the cabin roof before realizing his mistake just in time.
• Image | © Public Domain Images, Some Rights Reserved, Pixabay
• Sources | (Bent, 1937; Forbush, 1929)
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