Burrowing Owl: When a diminutive raptor needed help
Iwas organizing photos this week — I have many thousands of them — and ran across some images I took of a Burrowing Owl that was found years ago on Brentwood Street in Tehachapi.
Residents had reported the bird to the late Clark Moore and his wife Jean, who on that October morning were busy conducting a Turkey Vulture count for the Tehachapi Mountains Birding Club. Since the Moores were already occupied, I went over to see about the owl.
When I got there, I found it sitting placidly on the grass in a backyard. When I approached it flew just above the ground and landed about eight feet away, which was a good sign, indicating that its wings probably weren’t damaged, but something was wrong. The flight was what you would expect from a fledgling just learning to fly, and this was a full-grown bird that should have been able to arrow over the fence and disappear.
I caught the fairly calm bird and took it home and fed it some diced raw chicken, which it devoured. After giving the bird several quiet hours by itself, I examined it more closely. I found that most of its primary feathers were damaged on the tips and there was an oily substance on its neck and belly. Otherwise it seemed in good shape and had a good appetite.
The following day I took the little bird down to my old friend Dr. Ted Murphy, who founded the Facility for Animal Care and Treatment at Cal State Bakersfield in 1975. The FACT Center, which has since been closed down, treated and rehabbed thousands of raptors during its years of operation.
Ted looked over the bird and felt that its odds of recovery were good. The first step was to clean the oil off the owl’s feathers, and
then to remove a few of the most damaged feathers. This helps hasten the natural molting process, which takes months. I left the little owl in Ted’s large and capable hands with optimism for its future.
The Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) is a small resident of open prairies and fields. Standing only about nine inches tall, these little raptors are among the smallest of owls. They are also the only members of their family to routinely live in burrows. Other owl species may nest on the ground, but only Burrowing Owls take refuge underground throughout the year. They typically appropriate burrows that have already been dug by ground squirrels, prairie dogs, kangaroo rats, tortoises, and other creatures, and usually don’t dig them from scratch.
Burrowing Owls eat a variety of small prey items, including lots of invertebrates like crickets, grasshoppers, moths, earwigs, etc., as well as larger prey like frogs, lizards, small birds and rodents. These are the owls mostly likely to
be active during the day, but they hunt at night as well.
There used to be a small colony of Burrowing Owls, which my Uncle Hank called by their old common name “Johnny Owls,” living in old ground squirrel holes at the edge of his five-acre alfalfa field. They were relatively unafraid of people, and if you were on a tractor, you could drive within 15 feet of them before they’d fly away or duck into their holes.
I have also seen them on the campus at Cal State
Bakersfield, perched on mounds while cars drove by
a short distance away.
They like to have a vantage point from which they can survey their surroundings, and will often use an old fence post as a lookout point.
After about six weeks down at FACT, the little Burrowing Owl had recovered well enough to be released. It did well during flight tests, so Ted called me and said it was ready to go back to the wild.
I took it out to large empty fields south of Cherry Lane, not far from where it was found, but away from houses. The owl flew a short distance, then ducked into an old ground squirrel hole,
just like a Burrowing Owl should. It was gratifying to see that adorable little raptor able to be free again.
I don’t see Burrowing Owls in the Tehachapi Mountains as much as I’d like to, but I do run across them from time to time. It always makes my day to see these little birds engaged in their atypical owl behavior: sitting on the ground, in full sunlight as they observe their world.
Have a good week.