Gus Ben David’s Edgartown home is a well known way station for orphaned or injured birds and animals. Owlets, injured osprey, cold-stunned sea turtles, wayward otters: all are welcomed to convalesce under Mr. Ben David’s keen eye and able hands.

His newest charge is a three-week-old great horned owlet that fell out of a nest near the Blue Hills reservation in Quincy. Mr. Ben David paid a visit to the Gazette Tuesday with the owlet in tow.

There are three or four breeding pairs of great horned owlets on the Island, Mr. Ben David said. The owls are keen, powerful hunters. “Incredible predators,” Mr. Ben David said. “They eat anything.”

Full-grown great horned owls grow to be nearly two feet tall with a wing span or four to four and a half feet. Females are larger than males, and the owls don’t make their own nests. Instead they take over the nests of red-tailed hawks or crows.

The owlet under Mr. Ben David’s care fit comfortably in a purple plastic tub lined with straw. The owl’s gender is unclear — it would take a DNA test to know for sure — but Mr. Ben David’s instinct tells him the owl is female. She has soft, downy feathers and two small, asymetrical tufts at the top of her head that resemble small ears or horns. The tufts give the species its name. The ears will eventually enable the owl to triangulate sounds at night through the owl’s powerful auditory system, Mr. Ben David explained.

He feeds the growing owlet 12 to 15 mice per day. During her visit to the Gazette she nibbled harmlessly on fingers, swiveled her head around to survey the room and panted from time to time to regulate her body temperature “down to the nano-degree,” Mr. Ben David said.

She also rearranged her feathers in a gesture known as rousing, similar to a human yawn or stretch. This was proof that the owl, as Mr. Ben David said, was not made nervous by all the people taking pictures with their phones.

Mr. Ben David is an experienced falconer and former director of Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. He said the bird will not imprint on him and will go on to live in the wild as a normal great horned owl. She can be released once she is about 16 weeks old, Mr. Ben David said, though he might keep her through the fall so his granddaughter can practice her falconry skills.

During his visit Mr. Ben David recalled raising his four children along with a great-horned owl at Felix Neck. The owl, he recalled, was such a good hunter that he sometimes would catch a pheasant or other prey that would feed the whole family. Then there was Scuba Joe, the baby otter raised by Mr. Ben David who ended up living at the Bronx Zoo. Scuba Joe was great friends with the Ben Davids’ German shepherd, he recalled.

After the owlet was widely admired and Mr. Ben David answered a variety questions from the assembled Gazette staffers, the two headed back outside to Mr. Ben David’s truck.

It was almost lunchtime, and growing owlets are hungry.