Owl with an attitude wins face-off with deputy

Police officers were surprised to encounter a baby owl wandering down a street while they were out on patrol in the US state of Colorado.

The young northern saw-whet owl stopped deputies in their tracks Thursday as they were driving by the Rainbow Lakes campground near the small town of Nederland, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said.

The owl is fairly widespread and common, and generally seeks to avoid attention – a task it is normally quite successful at, according to the website Audubon.org.

Instead of moving it clicked back defiantly and stood by while officers took a video that has since become viral.

By the way, the “baby” owl could in fact be an adult: northern saw whet owls are usually not more than 20cm long, with females being slightly larger.

“After curious head-twisting on both sides, it flew safely away”, the tweet reads.

The encounter of the cute and feathered-kind has since been shared across Twitter thousands of times though retweets and under the hashtag #DeputiesLoveBabyOwls.