Always Watchful

Title

Always Watchful

Artist

Norman Johnson

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

A pair of burrowing owls monitor the activity around their nest in Cape Coral, Florida.

Burrowing owls (athene cunicularia) can be found in the open landscapes of prairies, desert, grassland, pastures, airports, public parks, and playgrounds of the Americas from western Canada, the United States, including Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America down to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. They live in underground burrows that they've dug or taken over from a prairie dog, ground squirrel, tortoise, gopher, or gopher turtle.

A small long greyish legged owl, they have a short tail, and a rounded head with bright yellow eyes, white eyebrows, and no ear tufts. They are brown with mottled sandy-pale spots. The breast is buff spotted with brown and the belly is buff with dark brown bars. The have a white/buff throat. They measure from 7.5" to 9.8" in length with a wingspan of about 21.7." The hooked beak is dark yellow or grey. Juveniles are less mottled than adults with a buff belly.

Burrowing owls feed mainly on insects and rodents but eat almost anything small that they can catch. They hunt close to the ground from dusk til dawn, during the day. They are most active at dusk and dawn and tend to rest during the middle of the day. They can usually be seen on fence posts, or other vantage points near their burrows. They can often be seen on the ground.

They often carpet the entrance to their burrows with animal dung to attract dung beetles and other insects to eat. To make sure that their nestlings have enough to eat, they often cache extra food in times of plenty. One cache in Saskatchewan in 1997 was filled with more than 200 rodents. When they bob up and down its an indication that they are nervous.

Uploaded

June 9th, 2019

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