Please refrain from eating the owls 😜
Ooo that's a good one! 😆
The "Sparred" owls are the ones I'm most familiar with. Being territorial animals, I don't think the occasion arises too much between species, but now that Barred territory is overtaking the Spotteds', that's opened them up for hybrids.
They seeeeem to be able to reproduce, but that makes some people a little less happy, as they are trying to save the actual Spotted Owl species, and hybrids interfere with keeping them being actual Spotteds.
There was also some German guy that played with making Snowy / Eagle Owl hybrids with limited success.
Birds are a larger and more genetically diverse group than something like dogs we think of as being different species, but really aren't. They've had tens of millions of years to diversify if they were going to do it. What we have now is the natural limits of genetic compatibility,. range, and behaviors.
We're still learning much about owl genetics, as they've traditionally been difficult animals to study. New data still comes out about which owls are related to which others, so we're essentially looking backwards at the cross breeding at this point. We're seeing the results of what has worked and what hasn't.
I'm far from a geneticist, but that's my understanding of it.
I can only imagine he is more amazing in person!
I love the unusual ones.
I haven't done any reading to see if melanism has any side effects like leucism does. I'll have to read up on that...
Some of the Masked Owls have nice colorations somewhat like this guy. We'll have to feature some of those soon too.
Has the same complexion as The Thing! 😁
These 2 look a lot less aggressive than Duo! 😅
Share a gift this Giving Tuesday with New Mexico Wildlife Center here.
I'd always recommend you donate to your local rescue first, but if you've liked some of the work this charity had provided this year or can't find who your local rescue is, these people will still appreciate whatever you would like to share.
No specific endorsement by me here, just sharing donate links for whomever happened to be in my posts today. As I said, you should fund your local rescue first.
Share a gift this Giving Tuesday with Wild Skies Raptor Center here.
I'd always recommend you donate to your local rescue first, but if you've liked some of the work this charity had provided this year or can't find who your local rescue is, these people will still appreciate whatever you would like to share.
No specific endorsement by me here, just sharing donate links for whomever happened to be in my posts today. As I said, you should fund your local rescue first.
Share a gift this Giving Tuesday with Center for Wildlife here.
I'd always recommend you donate to your local rescue first, but if you've liked some of the work this charity had provided this year or can't find who your local rescue is, these people will still appreciate whatever you would like to share.
No specific endorsement by me here, just sharing donate links for whomever happened to be in my posts today. As I said, you should fund your local rescue first.
Share a gift this Giving Tuesday with Suffolk Owl Sanctuary here.
I'd always recommend you donate to your local rescue first, but if you've liked some of the work this charity had provided this year or can't find who your local rescue is, these people will still appreciate whatever you would like to share.
No specific endorsement by me here, just sharing donate links for whomever happened to be in my posts today. As I said, you should fund your local rescue first.
From Izzy Edwards
Western Screech Owl illuminated by warehouse lights, presenting the illusion of daylight. This encounter from the spring gives me some autumn vibes. I don't have too many photos of birds with real fall color, working on that 😁
From Matthew Kirby
GHO enjoying one of the last trees to have leaves.
From Owl Rescue Centre
We were called out to rescue this little fella from a guest lodge near town this afternoon. According to some of the guests who were staying over, the young owlet was casting evil spells on them, hence he needed to vacate the premises. Fortunately though, every cloud has its silver lining. When we caught him, we noticed that he is severely underweight and malnourished. His naughty spell casting inadvertently saved his life 😉
From Raptor Education Group Inc
This week, families will gather to celebrate Thanksgiving. It is a day that has become synonymous with family coming together. It is an excellent time to introduce a few of the birds that make up REGI's fabulous and successful Raptor Foster-Parent Program.
We have used species-specific foster parents to raise orphaned raptors for over thirty years; we were the first wildlife center to utilize foster parents to raise young raptors while in care.
The species-specific part is essential as each species has different vocalizations and behaviors, the very thing an orphaned baby will need to know to survive and thrive in the wild world.
"Pops," also known as Papa, is a great-horned owl (GHO). He was already an older adult male and had a nest when admitted to REGI in late February 2011. He was found injured near a residence in Keshena, WI. Internal injuries and wing fractures suggest he was hit by a car.
While Pops was undergoing treatment in our critical care clinic in 2011, we admitted two starving great horned owlets. The adult male owl's demeanor changed immediately after hearing the soft sounds of the tiny owlets coming from an incubator in the same room.
Pops began calling the owlets, and they answered him. Even with serious injuries, he attempted to get out of his recovery box to reach them. Despite Pops and the owlets fragile medical conditions, they suddenly all had the will to live! That is how Pops got his name and became a valuable Raptor Education Group Inc (REGI) team member despite his disability.
Pops worked alone most years, rearing up to nine owlets in a season. He is as happy as an owl can be when the orphans are admitted in early spring, usually due to storms taking down their nest tree or other nest catastrophes that cause injury to the little ones. He has a job, and he does it well.
Cloud, an older adult female owl, was admitted from Freedom, WI, in June 2021. Due to her injuries, she also cannot return to the wild. Cloud also solidified her place at REGI as a foster parent in a similar scenario to that of needy owlets.
While she does less work when the owlets are tiny, she does her share as they leave the "nest" and begin to fly. Cloud is one-third larger than Pops, as is usual for great-horned owls and most raptors.
This year, Pops and Cloud reared five orphaned/injured great-horned owlets. The owlets from Wausau, Marshfield, Stevens Point, and Mosinee were admitted in March and April.
It was a hectic spring, summer, and fall for Pops and Cloud. Their roles fulfilled that of natural great-horned wild owl parents. They fed and preened the little ones, fluffy down and developing feathers; they even taught the spunky owls manners and good relationships with their siblings and other owls.
Once the owl family moved into the more extensive conditioning flight, they taught them the delicate skill of hunting mice. The youngsters need to know everything from vocalizations and body language to recognizing predators to survive in the wild and thrive. Pops and Cloud were wild adults and, therefore, knew all there was to know about what the kids needed to know.
Pops and Cloud are not mated, even though they live together in the off-season. Birds choose their mates, unlike many mammals and domestic animals. Mates are long-term relationships. Their pairing often lasts for a lifetime. Pops and Cloud are "parenting partners, " not mates other than to raise the owlets that are not their biological offspring.
Enjoy the photos of the owlets soon after capture and admission and as they grew and developed this summer.
As the owlets mature, they are transferred to larger flight areas to develop and condition their muscles and hone their mouse-hunting skills. The foster parents remain with the young owls throughout the spring, summer, and fall until the young birds are ready to be released to the wild.
They were released in early November.which is the natural time for young owls to leave their parents. Pops and Cloud are now relaxing and enjoying some quiet time after raising the active group of young owls.
Great-horned owls are our earliest nesters in WI, and when March arrives, so too will orphans for the fosters to raise.
Our world at REGI is filled with miracles every day. Our best wishes to you and yours this holiday season.
(Human Imprinting occurs when a human -feeds a baby bird early in life, which causes the chick to identify as a human. Food delivery is the stimulus for the brain of avian species to identify their parents. It is totally different than "taming" and until taming, cannot be reversed. It is why we BEG people NOT TO FEED any baby bird, including geese, EVEN FOR A DAY. Rather than helping the little ones, imprinting them will make them non-releasable to the wild. They will not survive in the wild because they do not behave or interact normally.)
From Texas Monthly 19 JAN 2024
The world’s smallest owl is a swift, acrobatic hunter whose victims never hear it coming.
Roy Rodriguez has seen hundreds of bird species in his lifetime, but the lead interpreter at the state-run World Birding Center, a collection of nine parks and preserves in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, still remembers the first time he saw an elf owl.
It was early spring, about 26 years ago, in Bentsen–Rio Grande Valley State Park, southwest of Mission. “I was with a bunch of birders sitting in a circle at dusk, staring at a small hole way up in a tree,” Rodriguez recalls. Their hope was to catch a glimpse of the smallest owl in the world, a puffy, lightly speckled, gray-and-brown bird barely bigger than a house sparrow. “We were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes,” Rodriguez says, “and I was beginning to think somebody was pulling my leg.” After a long wait, their patience paid off. “This nice little round head with huge yellow eyes and frosty eyebrows” appeared in the hole. The owl peered out and did a quick check of lighting conditions. Nope. Not dark enough yet. It vanished and reappeared a couple more times. “Then,” says Rodriguez, the elf owl hopped up on the edge of the hole and seemed to fall almost straight down, before finally spreading its wings and disappearing into the night.
Barely tipping the scales at one and a half ounces in weight and six inches in length—but with an impressive thirteen-and-a-half-inch wingspan—Micrathene whitneyi is a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States. The species’ estimated global population of 150,000 to 190,000 spends the fall and winter in central and southern Mexico as far south as Oaxaca, but some of the adults migrate north in the spring and summer to breed in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. It’s an adaptable critter, getting along in varied climates and terrains. “They can occur all the way from the desert into the foothills and as far up as five thousand feet,” says Barry Zimmer, another elf owl admirer and a longtime group leader for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. The elf owl is also comfortable in semitropical forests and riparian woodlands. In Texas, it is found sporadically around the southern perimeter of the state, including the Rio Grande Valley and Big Bend.
Like their considerably larger, more fearsome brethren, elf owls are raptors, but instead of wreaking havoc on mammals and birds, they prey on creepy crawlies: beetles, moths, crickets, grasshoppers, scorpions, spiders, and centipedes, plus the occasional small, tasty lizard, snake, or rodent. The animal’s unusual call is often described as a yip or a doglike bark. And again, like its larger cousins, the elf owl has impressive moves. It is a swift, even acrobatic hunter, snatching insects on the wing and diving for them from low perches in the dark of night. The owl’s small size even allows it to nimbly chase down its prey on foot, as well as to hang upside down from foliage and shake it until invertebrates fall out. Another reason it is such an effective hunter—aside from excellent eyesight and hearing—is that its victims never hear it coming. Like most owls, elves have a row of soft, sound-baffling feathers on the leading edge of their wings. Once their prey is secured, they feast, carefully using their beaks to rip off annoying or hazardous parts like stingers and wings. Zimmer, for one, is impressed.“You’ve got this little tiny owl, but he’s out here doing all these big owl things—just on a smaller scale. That’s pretty awesome.”
But securing its next meal is only part of an elf owl’s day. It might also produce the next generation of elf owls. And to accomplish that, an owl father-to-be (males are the designated house hunters) must first secure a nice, snug nest hole. Depending on the terrain and climate, that can be a tree (preferably with one or more woodpecker holes), a utility pole, a saguaro cactus, or even the fat flower stalk of an agave or yucca.
Prefab housing—as in nest boxes—has also proved surprisingly acceptable. Texas Parks & Wildlife naturalist Bonnie McKinney discovered that fact when she put out dozens of tiny owl nest boxes for a study at the Black Gap research station, near Marathon, in the mid-nineties. Occupancy reached 34 percent, and an impressive 97 percent of the hatchlings fledged. If you live in elf owl territory and want to try attracting them to a nest box, check Nestwatch for building instructions. An unobtrusive light in the general vicinity of a nest box can also attract moths for the owls to eat.
Once an elf owl has selected a suitable nest cavity, his next step is finding a mate. And that means some vocal networking. Or, as Rodriguez puts it, “He’s saying, ‘Hey lady, here I am!’ ” He’s also announcing, “This is my territory—keep out!” If a previous mate has happened to come back to the area, the two of them might get back together. Otherwise, he’s got to find a new partner. And that can be a monumental undertaking.
In the three-year study she conducted just outside her house, McKinney had a front-row seat for an avian version of The Bachelor. “The desert was alive,” she wrote in her report, “with the puppy-like continuous yips of the males calling to the females.” As on the reality TV show, courtship could become extremely fraught. She reported watching one male as he flew around in a frenzy, entering the nest box, and then leaving. “The male’s excited yips increased in volume to a frantic pitch” when a female came close. Once things began to get serious, his calls changed tone, to a soft “churr” sound. She answered with a high-pitched “phew.” Around daylight, the scientist reported, the presumably besotted couple “disappeared into a nearby tree.”
Once the knot is tied, the female owl moves in and begins to roost in the nest, and the male becomes her chief caregiver, bringing her food many times a night. Over a period of several days, she lays between one and five small round eggs. She might leave the nest to fly around a little at dusk and dawn to stretch her wings, but otherwise both owls stay quiet, because the last thing they want to do is attract attention from potential predators, such as larger raptors.
No matter how silent they try to be, though, it’s pretty hard to avoid unwanted attention for the 24-day incubation period and the subsequent 28 to 32 days it takes for the young birds to fledge. Rodriguez tells the story of a group of birders who were watching an owl hole when, to their horror, a large snake started up the tree. The parent birds immediately sprang into action, “dive-bombing, grabbing the snake with their talons, pecking it with their beaks.” But they were helpless to stop the reptile. It entered the hole and when it came out, Rodriguez says, “it was fatter than when it went in.”
Snakes and other predators notwithstanding, elf owls as a species are not under immediate threat, although the American Bird Conservancy describes the population as decreasing, and it is listed as endangered in California. As with many birds and other animals, spreading cities and farmland pose the greatest danger to their wild habitat.
If the bad news is that nature does not play favorites, the good news is that the young owls that do survive grow up fast, soon looking like small carbon copies of the adults. By the time they are a few months old, they will be ready to make the flight to Mexico for the winter. There they will hang out and grow into sexual maturity. Then, sometime in February or March, when the sun signals that the season is just right, they will spread their wings and head north to find a mate and start the cycle all over again.
From A Place Called Hope
Chimney Caps. They're a MUST. Cavities in nature, offer places to hide, nest, or seek food. Our open chimney stacks are an invitation for disaster. Many critters can enter but when it's time to get out, the animals often find themselves stuck. This time of year, when fires are burning, our wildlife can become victims to smoke inhalation and if that's not bad enough, they can also succumb to serious burns. Please install chimney caps to prevent this common conflict we impose on our wildlife.
This Barred Owl was stuck in the stack above the flue for days. Dehydration and starvation are a common result to any creature that is trapped. Luckily homeowners did not add to the dilemma by starting a fire! Instead, they called their local Animal Control Department in Middletown and were directed to APCH. Our team is familiar with these distress calls and Todd responded promptly. This was an older fireplace and the flue was really tight. Not to mention the fact that the owl was able to get up the chimney above arms reach as the stack curved.
The good news is Todd was prepared and ultimately succeeded in getting the owl extracted safely. The owl has been hydrated and will be ready to eat a meal on Thanksgiving. A free meal! We can't offer food immediately to an animal that is dehydrated or starving, we must first push fluids to get the body functioning properly for digestion. But we anticipate a full recovery.
The owl is dirty and dehydrated and possibly a bit pissed off! But it could have been so much worse!
With all the discussion about owl defense in the grocery store post, I thought I'd highlight some in a new post so everyone can see.
Owl's main weapons are their feet. They've got big claws, they are super strong, and they're lightning fast. In comparison, the beak is weak, short, and curved so it doesn't give much reach. It's also close to the vital eyes and ears.
This Long Eared Owl is defending its egg from a very determined kestrel. You can see all the defense behaviors (clicking, flaring, and fighting) a number of times in the full video.
Here's the description from the video:
I invite you to watch two stories -LEOS courtship including food dance, rodent delivery and nest scraping. Each story takes place in Hungary in March 2024 and each ends in a fight of Long-eared owl (Female) with Kestrel (Female).
In the first case, the nest box belonged to long- eared owls in previous seasons and Kestrels want to take it over this season. They did not succeed. Mrs LEO Won.
The nest box which is shown in the second part of the video belonged to Kestrels in previous seasons but in 2024, LEOS occupied it during the night and Kestrels during the day. Thus, when Mrs LEO had her first egg and stayed in the nest box during the day, a problem arose as Kestrels wanted to have this nest box for themselves and fought for it. In this case, Kestrels won and Mrs LEO left her egg in the nest box. Kestrels do not eat the egg but guard the nest box.
Another nest box has been installed next to it, so that both Kestrels and LEOS Could have their own place but Kestrels guard both nest boxes now and LEOS do not come to any of them. Enjoy!
I've put the best kick attack in the title pic here for you if you don't want to watch the whole thing. The video is great though, the sound adds a lot to the experience and there is so much great bird behavior. The kestrel is really trash talking the LEO before many of the fights.
There's nothing I'd consider especially graphic, but it's bird fighting, and the egg does not make it in part 2, so there is that.
From Bryce Gaudian
We are currently experiencing our first snowfall of the season. Reminded me of this Long-eared Owl hunting in fresh fallen snow in January of this year; and very fitting with a Snowy Owl hunting during a snow squall in March of last year. Minnesota.
No breaks because of weather for the owls! Rain, shine, sleet, or snow, a bird's gotta eat!
From Rodney Ervin
Somewhere out there is a little owl that is hiding in plain sight. Eastern Screech Owls are probably one of my most favorite Owls just because of their camouflage. I looked right at this owl for a couple of minutes before actually seeing it lol. Taken in Northern Indiana.
From Michael Zambardino
While attempting to stay far from this owl, a peregrine falcon chased it right up to me, I became a statue till it chose to fly off.
In that time 3 cars drove right between me and the owl, and it never even flinched.
From Owl Rescue Centre
This sneaky little lady has been living inside a Shoprite store in Thokoza for the last few weeks. She was a difficult customer, had all her hiding spots well mapped out, just in case some owl rescuers came knocking. That's Jacob in the photo, he's their security gent who offered a great deal of help in rescuing her. We don't often tag company rescues anymore, but we know Shoprite South Africa loves owls
Owls would be amazing spies!