by BA Nester

Aren’t Owls amazing creatures?  They sit completely still, scanning their territory looking for prey!  Then, swooping down silently, they nab a mouse or vole or snake.  I was taught to look for Owls by scanning the tall trees, looking for a dark, oval, owl-shape near the trunk.  I’ve spotted so many Barred Owls and Great Horned Owls that way!  But then we moved to Florida and I learned about the oh-so-cute Burrowing Owl!  My “tried and true” owl-spotting-method doesn’t work at all for these little gems!

Let me describe a Burrowing Owl.  Small. They are described as about the size of a Robin, but bulkier!  Both sexes are the same size.  They have long legs, beautiful, intense bright-yellow eyes that seem to stare right through you!  They are well-camouflaged with brown and tan feathers and white-ish spots on their upper parts.  They have a white eyebrow and a white throat.  All perfect colors to conceal them in the short vegetation of the open grasslands and prairies, farmlands and airfields in which they live.

As their name indicates, they live in burrows!  UNDERGROUND!  What?  I’d never heard of that!  Yes!  These cuties live in burrows!  In Florida, they usually excavate the burrows themselves or maybe usurp one from a tortoise.  In the west, the Cowboys used to call them “Howdy Birds” because they seemed to nod in greeting as they stood at the entrances to their burrows. Out west, they usually use existing prairie-dog, ground squirrel, kangaroo rat, or armadillo burrows. 

I had to do some research to find out how BIRDS dig!  Cornell Lab of Ornithology says: “Both members of the pair … dig a burrow by digging with their beaks and kicking back soil with their feet.”  Amazing! It usually takes them several days to dig out their burrow, but if they’re just doing a ‘remodeling’ of an existing burrow to prepare it for nesting, it goes much quicker!

Slightly elevated areas are desirable to avoid flooding in the burrows.  They look for areas that have nearby “look-out posts” like mounds of dirt, bushes or posts to perch on. They like to have a lot of other connected burrows to allow them a variety of escape options from their many predators! 

The Burrowing Owl has many natural predators. Badgers, foxes, skunks, weasels, raccoons, and snakes dig up or enter burrows, eating eggs, nestlings, or adult females; other owls, hawks, falcons, domestic cats and dogs, and coyotes prey upon adults and young outside the burrow.

Food:

These small owls hunt mostly at dusk and at night, but they also do a lot of hunting during the day. Their hunting is mostly done close to the ground, swooping down from a perch, hovering low over fields, or running along the ground!  They catch the prey in their talons.  The males prey on large insects, mice, voles, and shrews, frogs and toads, snakes and lizards, turtles and salamanders and lots of small mammals. The females primarily catch insects: grasshoppers and crickets, moths and beetles which they sometimes catch in mid-air. 

As the Burrowing Owls prepare for nesting and hatching season, they often cache their food in different parts of the burrow.  One ornithologist found a cache of 200 rodents!  WOW!  They also eat the insects that come with the animal dung they use to line the mouth of their burrows.  Pretty dynamic way to feed your young …. like planting a garden and then harvesting!

Burrowing Owls are known for the interesting movements they make when they are disturbed or curious about some near-by activity.  They bob their heads up and down and around in a jerky manner.  While it’s humorous looking to us, it serves their purposes exactly!  

Citizen Scientists:

Typical to too many of our bird species today, the Burrowing Owl numbers are declining primarily because of habitat loss!  Fortunately, these cute little Owls are adaptable to man-made burrows.  Conservationists create artificial burrows using PVC piping and buckets, other tubing and man-made materials.  Thankfully, there are a lot of Citizen Scientist groups who are monitoring and protecting our Burrowing Owls for future generations to enjoy!

Range:

If you want to see some Burrowing Owls when you are vacationing in Florida, Texas or the SW states, it’s best to arm yourself with binocs AND a spotting scope!  Look for wide expanses of short vegetation with culverts and ditches.  As mentioned before, they are SMALL and well-camouflaged!  Spotting is best at dawn and dusk, but you can find them any time of the day.  Instead of scanning the tall trees, look for dirt mounds especially around burrow entrances, where the owls like to stand when they’re not hunting.  Sometimes all that shows are the tops of their heads and their eyes (so cute)!  As with all birding, bring your patience, sunscreen and insect repellent, a good hat, comfy chair and a water bottle!  Good birding!!