Labrador woman scraped up and needed a stitch after mysterious owl attack

When Carly Blake first felt the thing plow into the back of her head, she thought someone had thrown a chunk of firewood at her. But when she stopped and lifted her head, she saw “a big bird” swooping away, she says.

It turned out to be a great horned owl, and it had been skulking around in the trees for a few days, according to David Wolfrey, a conservation officer for the Nunatsiavut government in Rigolet, N.L.

“I had a couple people call me and told me they heard of someone getting attacked by an owl,” Wolfrey said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s pretty rare.”

Blake, who lives in Rigolet, a community of about 300 people along Labrador’s north coast, said she needed a stitch in her head after the March 4 avian dive-bombing. That suture is now out, but there are still bumps on the side of her head where the bird’s talons dug in, she said in an interview Tuesday.

According to the Hinterland Who’s Who wildlife website, female great horned owls can weigh as much as two kilograms, while males can be up to 1.5 kilograms. The animal has a wingspan of about 1.2 metres.

Blake said she could feel her head swelling up as soon as she reached up to assess the damage.

“I love listening to the owls, and myself and my kids would be out there and I’d be hootin’ out to the owls,” she said. “Won’t be doing that no more.”

Wolfrey ultimately caught and killed the bird – he said he got a call shortly after it attacked Blake and it didn’t go far after that. “If it attacked a kid, it would have done a lot of damage,” he said, noting the force with which it slammed into Blake.

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He said he first wondered if the owl was aggressive because it was hungry and lunging at anything it could find. Owls often hang around Rigolet and hunt rabbits in the nearby woods, he said, but this is the first he’d heard of one going after people.

But that theory didn’t pan out: Wolfrey said he sent the carcass to be assessed by a wildlife team in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, and they told him the bird seemed healthy and well fed.

“So I don’t know,” Wolfrey said. “Just mistaking her for something, I guess.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 17, 2021.