Florida's Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia)

January 2011. I love Florida for the diversity of its plants and animals. Southwest Florida is one of Florida's marvelous places to enjoy subtropical nature venues. City, county, state, federal, and private non-profit parks are plentiful. But one doesn't have to go to a wildlife preserve to see eye-catching happenings of the natural world. Chances are that if you sit tight in your own backyard nature will bring a show to you in Florida. But if you do want to make an expedition at whatever level of challenge you prefer, opportunities abound here.

Today I'm reminiscing about a recent burrowing owl workshop I took with Bob Salyers of Bob Salyers Photography in Bradenton Florida. If you've never heard of Bob Salyers, I'm not surprised. He has a nice website to display his nature photos at http://bobsalyers.net/index.php,  but this is one of hundreds  of great sites vying for your attention.

 

 Bob Salyers, Photographer and Trip Leader

If you've never heard of burrowing owls I'm not surprised either. I never knew that owls could live underground until I saw burrowing owls in the Galapagos Islands some years ago. And even then I didn't know they lived in Florida.

 Portrait of a Burrowing Owl
 

These owls are small, with a body length of about ten inches. But they have relatively long legs. With these legs they are capable of digging their own burrow, or taking over a burrow abandoned by some other animal and expanding it. Burrowing owls are fairly widespread in the western United States and in Florida. They tend to live in flat, open, grassy areas where they walk rather than fly most of the time. They can be seen walking around stalking prey by day or night.

 

Burrowing Owl, Profile View 

Bob's workshop took us to the Cape Coral area where owl burrows, marked off with PVC pipe, are located in vacant lots scattered among development houses. People have erected small wooden crosses near burrow entrances. The owls sometimes use them as perches.

The two pictures below illustrates how well camouflaged  a burrowing owl can be in it's grassy habitat.

Owl, Burrow Marker, and Wooden Perch.

Burrowing Owl Relaxing in the Sun

On this particular day only a few owls chose to come above ground to model for us, but that was enough. As we closed in to get pictures of the owls Bob directed our movements so we wouldn't spook them.

An owl burrow can be up to 40 feet long and might be home to snakes as well as owls. It's said that when highly disturbed a burrowing owl makes a noise that sounds very much like a rattlesnake. Here's a picture of a pair of burrowing owls with the male standing guard at the burrow entrance while the female sticks just her head above ground.

Pair of Burrowing Owls at the Burrow Entrance

The male and female burrowing owl are about the same size. The literature reports that the male is typically lighter in color than the female because he spends more time outside the burrow where the sun bleaches some of the color from his feathers.

When these owls feel threatened they stand erect. At times they will bob up and down to indicate their nervousness. At one point in our venture this male went into the erect posture to indicate he felt we were getting too close. At that point we backed up and let him get on with his day of relaxing in the sun.

Burrowing Owl in Posture Indicating He Is Uneasy

Like many ground dwelling animals, burrowing owls pay attention to the sky lest they become a meal for some flying predator. Below is a picture of a turkey vulture flying overhead while we were visiting the Cape Coral owls.
 

 Turkey Vulture Soaring Overhead

The next picture shows the owl checking out the vulture. Here too the owl is in a posture that indicates he is feeling uneasy. This posture displays a white chin patch not visible in the pictures above.

Burrowing Owl Spots a Raptor Flying Overhead

What do burrowing owls eat? The literature says they eat small reptiles and amphibians, insects, an occasional bird, and sometimes a baby owl filtched from

a neighbors burrow. 

During the nesting season the female may lay 4 to 12 eggs, but typically only four or five survive. Burrowing owls are considered either endangered or threatened by the governments of several of their native countries. Loss of habitat is the major reason for their shrinking range and declining numbers.