From KSL News Utah
25 JAN 2025
SPRINGVILLE - Nigel the screech owl is back home after getting stuck in a downspout at the Springville Museum of Art about a week ago.
The city of Springville said on Facebook that the museum's facilities team came to the rescue and got the owl out of harm's way. Then, Nigel the screech owl was rehabilitated for a week at the Great Basin Wildlife Rescue.
Finally, Nigel was released back to the grounds of the museum where he lives on Friday.
"During the summer months, it is not uncommon to find these little owls throughout the grounds at the museum," Springville City said.
The city said the screech owl is native to Utah, and they expressed gratitude to the people who helped with Nigel's rescue and rehab.
Hello my friend! I wonder if he will remember this and avoid a repeat? Do you know much about their memory/learning patterns?
Great question! I haven't really read much about owl intelligence directly. From various readings and talking to people, I know owls are stubborn and hard to get motivated, so they're a little bit tricky to really assess their intelligence, because we don't always know how to get them to go along with our little tests.
An important question to ask is what animal intelligence means to us. While owls don't demonstrate curiosity or complex problem solving like corvids famously do, owls have learned to adapt to life in nearly every climate around the world. They have learned to stockpile food, or even to "farm food" to some extent. Little owls will leave meat scraps to attract insects for them to eat, and burrowing owls will bring dung to the burrow to cultivate beetles. They remember their favorite roosts. They can analyze the things they hear with their fancy 3D hearing, and keep track of the location of things they can't see. Much of their brain is dedicated to that sight and hearing that makes them such successful predators. Burrowing owls also mimic rattlesnakes to ward off predators of their own. They even understand each other's vocabulary and greetings and warnings, to know if another owl is known or a stranger to their territory.
It seems this vent should at least stand out as not a great hiding spot. It seemed like a nice protective space, but after being left with its toosh hanging out and then being drug away by humans, the experience hopefully was educational for little Nigel. Owls demonstrate at least an average amount of bird intelligence, Also thinking about it, we've seen many stories of owls getting stuck down chimneys, but I've never come across one that repeatedly got stuck in at least the same chimney twice! 🤪
They may not be crows or ravens, but they definitely seem good at things to make a successful owl!
Your writing style is creative and funny, you almost always make me smile, if not outright laugh. Thank you for the information you had.
Have you ever considered a children's book about owls, or anything else that interests you? I can only imagine success, if you publish in this style.
I wonder what is involved in that... 🤔 I'd have to team up with someone that can illustrate!
I've put in to try and volunteer this year at the local rescue/rehab, which turns out is the largest in our state, and they have raptor ambassadors that do family programs, and I'm very curious the process to weasel my way into that. I really like sharing what I learn about them. They are really great animals of course, but I think there are so many great qualities about them that most people aren't aware of. To be honest, I think they also have a lot of characteristics that would normally be undesirable (hate people, don't do tricks, spend most of the time sitting around/sleeping, bitey/scratchy) but they are packaged very nicely that it allows you to overlook that stuff and I think they're a good gateway animal to learn about other less orthodox favorite animals like vultures and opossums.
We need to coexist with all these animals, the cute and the strange and creepy, and there's a lot of reasons to love just about all of them. I like showing all those qualities with you guys, and I certainly wouldn't object to getting to do it in person.
I have no idea, but I keep hearing self publishing is easy and affordable. 8 know Amazon has options for it, I don't know about alternatives to Amazon, but I imagine they exist.
Oh that sounds amazing! Maybe through these avenues, you'll meet an illustrator? Heck, it's possible you already know illustrators and just didn't know it!
I hope you look into this; I'm somewhere near sixties, and I will definitely purchase your creations, if my budget allows!
If anything like that does happen, I will of course let you all know here first!
That sounds good!