Ramona Maximuk arrived home Thursday afternoon to find an owl perched on the sofa in her living room.
There were no open doors or windows. No signs of a struggle to escape. Not an owl dropping in sight.
Just a big barred owl sitting there, blinking, on Maximuk’s couch.
“It was surreal,” said the Esquimalt resident. “It’s something you don’t expect to come home to, but it was a real pleasant experience.”
So Maximuk, an advertising sales representative for the Times Colonist, made some tea and just sat with the raptor less than two metres away.
It looked right at her, blinking its big round eyes, occasionally flexing its five-foot wing span and hopping up to a tall armoire in the living room.
Maximuk’s daughter, Chloe, 27, joined the little sit-down and opened the French doors to the backyard, giving the owl an opportunity to escape into the oak trees in Cairn Park, where the family sees and hears owls all the time.
But it stayed for about a half hour before flying out the open doors.
It isn’t the first time barred owls have been found inside homes in Greater Victoria: Two cases of owl home invasions were reported in November in Oak Bay.
Oak Bay police answered a call about an intruder in a home on Beach Drive, where the feathered suspect was perched on a couch staring back at them. After some coaxing, the bird walked out through open patio doors and flew away.
A few days later, a house on nearby Musgrave Street got a visit from what is thought to be the same barred owl. A house sitter went to check her friend’s home and found the whole place in disarray — pictures down, things tipped over and droppings everywhere.
Tina Gaboury thought it was a break-in — until she saw an owl perched on a chandelier. Based on soot marks on the ceiling and walls, it was determined the owl entered through the chimney and fireplace.
Maximuk, who lives in a 130-year-old, five-storey heritage home in Esquimalt, is perplexed as to how the owl entered her home this week, because her chimney and fireplace haven’t been used in years and the chimney is sealed off at the top with only a small gap.
Ann Nightingale, a bird expert at Rocky Point Bird Observatory, said home invasions by barred owls happen more often than they are reported.
She said it’s nesting season and barred owls are looking for suitable sites — usually holes in trees, but their searches sometimes include chimneys.
“If there’s no screens or glass on the fireplace, they’re in your house,” Nightingale said, noting they can squeeze through small gaps.
“Their feathers give the impression they are twice as wide as they really are,” she said. “They can squeeze through small spaces.”
Coming in through an open door or window isn’t likely, she said.
Known to live in both forest and urban areas, barred owls are among the most common owls on the south coast of B.C. An Environment Canada fact sheet says barred owls are not typically shy around humans.
“Being at the top of the food chain, they don’t fear a lot of things,” Nightingale said. “They tend to be very confident and they are quite curious.”
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