Getting down to earth with Burrowing Owls
I got a phone call one day this week from a person with the
Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society who wanted to talk about
Burrowing Owls.
Fair enough. I like talking about Burrowing Owls just about as
much as I like talking about anything.
Getting down to earth with Burrowing Owls
I got a phone call one day this week from a person with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society who wanted to talk about Burrowing Owls.
Fair enough. I like talking about Burrowing Owls just about as much as I like talking about anything.
The charismatic little birds stand less than 10 inches tall. Unlike many other owls, they’re frequently out doing their thing during daylight hours. The owls can often be found on fenceposts, or loitering around the mouths of the abandoned ground squirrel burrows that they use for nests. They are distributed throughout the West and Mexico, wherever short grasslands dominate. The owls don’t like lush pastures, because they like to see what’s coming, making heavily grazed parcels just perfect.
Their brown feathers are dappled with white, but it’s their comically long legs and startling yellow eyes that set them off as extraordinary. Should something alarm one, the owl is likely to bob up and down, making curious squeaky-toy noises before taking flight on silent wings. A person threatening owls in their burrow will encounter a different call – a very convincing impression of a rattlesnake’s buzzing.
Appearance and behavior not usually what people talk about when the conversation turns to Burrowing Owls. It’s their peril.
The owls were once widely distributed around the Bay Area, but as farms gave way to office parks, housing tracts and highways, the open ground the owls need began to disappear, and along with it, the owls themselves.
There’s still a pretty robust population in the South Valley and San Benito County, with several colonies thriving between Hollister and Gilroy.
Because the owls are declining in number, a handful of property owners see them as a liability, an animal whose very presence might only usurp property rights.
I am aware of one local colony that was plowed under after the property tenant discovered it.
That’s a shame, both for the owls and for us. Their antics make me smile, and the site of three downy young lined up at the mouth of a burrow, blinking in the sun, would make the most hardened chuckle.
The owls also are voracious consumers of small rodents and large insects, cleaning fields more efficiently than any poison will.
Unlike many of the animals whose numbers are declining, Burrowing Owls are not particularly sensitive to the presence of people.
There was a thriving colony in Morgan Hill that was surrounded by industrial development. The first Burrowing Owls I ever encountered were wedged between a business park and the Salinas Airport, and they appeared to like the arrangement just fine.
All of this would argue for just leaving the little brown guys alone to go about their business while we go about ours.
If you remain alert as you pass unplowed fields in our area, you are bound to make your own Burrowing Owl discoveries before long. Since the birds do not roam far from their home turf, it’s possible to go back and look in on your newfound friends from time to time.
I followed one family’s progress faithfully one year.
They were located between home and my office at the time, which made them the most convenient owl family I had ever encountered. Their burrow was near a barbed wire fence, where the male liked to perch and stand watch.
Late in spring, three young, still covered in down, emerged from the burrow with their mother. Soon, they took on the ragged look of adolescents as their feathers grew in. By midsummer, they looked like adults, but still hung around the family home. The father bird remained on sentry duty, his feathers noticeably bleached and worn from the countless hours in the elements.
Descendants of that family probably remain, because I continue to check on that colony occasionally, and it continues to thrive.
