Down at our cabin, there has been a lot of Western Screech Owl activity this summer. They are calling - two, three or more at a time - very nearby. They're loud and obviously close, but nowhere to be seen in the daylight. That's how it goes with owls - much more often heard than seen, between the nocturnal habits and the dense cover they seek out by day.
There's one owl that makes it easier on us, though. It likes to sit on the ground, in wide open spaces... in the daytime no less! Even so, they're ever harder to see because we keep encroaching on their habitat.
It's a rerun this week - at first the plan was for Julie to do a diary this week, but she ended up in the hospital instead. I haven't had time to write something fresh... sorry.
Burrowing owls are found over a wide range, from the western part of North America, all through Central America, much of South America, with a small Caribbean population. They like wide-open spaces with low vegetation and grasses - ranchland is where we look for them around here, mostly. But you'll find them in other aglands, grasslands, deserts - even some suburban areas, if conditions are right.
And what are those conditions? The main thing is that it needs to be possible to construct a burrow in the ground. Sometimes the owls will excavate their own burrows, but most frequently they will take over a burrow built by ground squirrels, prairie dogs or gophers. They'll even use human-made "burrows" whether intentional (like artificial nests) or unintentional (a bit of abandoned pipe that opens to the ground). They use the burrows for both nesting and roosting.
They do a lot of perch-hunting for their prey - one more reason to scan the fence posts as you're going through cattle country. They also hunt from the air, in a way that (to me at least) was reminiscent of a kestrel hunting. We watched them flying somewhat low over a field, actually hovering in place and occasionally dropping down to grab a morsel. (There was a bit of a stiff headwind when we were watching this, so I'm not sure how typical/common it is for them to hover hunt.) They eat small rodents, lizards, birds, insects and other invertebrates. While looking for info about them hover-hunting, I have to admit I was surprised to see that they even take mourning doves (and other zenaida doves) which are about the same size as the owls.
They're a bird that my friends and I will always make an extra effort to see when we're in their habitat. What makes them even more fun is their propensity for turning up in truly unexpected places. We even get them here in San Francisco from time to time. The first time I ever saw one here was many years ago when a friend and I were walking Ocean Beach, looking for shorebirds. A woman came up to us and said that she was pretty sure she'd seen an tiny owl in a hole in the bluff just south of us, but she didn't have binoculars to get a good look. We both kinda skeptical, but took a look at the bluff (which houses a bank swallow colony in breeding season) anyway. And right in the middle of it, there was a tiny owl, standing up in the entrance to one of the larger bank swallow burrows. A few years ago, another one spent most of a winter in a crevice about the Sutro Baths. And there's this story, which is what got me to thinking about burrowing owls in the first place.
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I can't get enough of these guys...
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