Robin McKinley

[Updated on: Mon, 09 January 2012 11:16]

[Updated on: Mon, 09 January 2012 11:17] by Moderator

Diane in MN wrote on Sun, 08 January 2012 21:28

Next time, I’m adopting an elderly, three-legged Chihuahua. Well, based on my experience with a tripod, the lack of a leg wouldn't slow a dog down any. They might have an awkward walk, but three-legged dogs can run just fine. When my previous boy, Atlas, had his amputation, people told us "A dog is born with three legs and a spare," and it's really true. "Elderly" would probably do the trick, though. !

This is what I get for not checking the blog and forum for a bit over a day... this is what *I* was going to write!

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I rescued a small fluffy baby owl something a few years ago, sitting in the main road at the end of the mews’ drive, waiting for something to happen. What happened was that I got out of Wolfgang and moved it. What I remember is blogging that I’d pulled my sleeves down over my hands to pick it up and someone who knows more than I do posted to the forum that its mum wouldn’t have minded human smell on her offspring the way us mostly-clueless vague tree-hugging nature-lovers would expect

The smell part is true... but even baby owls have rather pointy sharp things on the ends of their feet and can be surprisingly good at grabbing things with them... having a layer or more of thick fabric between you and an owl is a good thing unless you know exactly how to handle it to keep from being hurt. Also, as a general rule, owls are much more likely than hawks and things to use the pointy end in the middle of their face to grab at things as well.

And I do love seeing barn owls waft overhead (partly because it's a lot harder to see things like great-horned owls and screech owls and the like at night, given their colouring (also they tend to be more crepuscular than nocturnal)) - it's always exciting to see a bird of prey, and doubly so to see an owl. Barn owls aren't my favourite owls, but they are one of the few I've seen in the wild and it's just magical.

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Black Bear wrote on Mon, 09 January 2012 17:23

Are barn owls common in CA, Equus? They're threatened here, and I've never seen one. One of the reasons I heard from a local wildlife expert was that the replacement in the midwest of old wooden barns with new steel pole barns in the last 20 years has caused sharp declines in population. The metal barns get much hotter at the upper levels in summer and don't stay as warm in winter, so the owls have fewer suitable nest sites and don't have their standard 2 broods per season anymore.

Yeah, barn owls are a dime a dozen in the Davis/Sacramento area of California, and I've seen several near here (eastern end of the Bay Area) which leads me to believe they're pretty common here too, since I don't actually go looking for them.

I find it really interesting how one area's common species is another's very rare species - I spent a month at the Minnesota Raptor Center, where they got all excited about barn owls, but barred owls and bald eagles were super common. I'm the other way around - where I learned about raptors and rehab, the barn owls are super common, while barred owls are almost nonexistent and bald eagles are pretty uncommon. Barn owls do nest in barns out here, and I see a fair number of nest boxes as I drive past orchards and such as well. They're kind of cavity nesters, so they'll probably take over anything of suitable size and accessibility. There used to be a pair that nested in the riding arena at the barn I rode at several years ago.

Of course, spotted owls are getting pretty uncommon all over... difficult to differentiate from barred owls if you aren't familiar with them, and so much more restricted in habitat.

Fun fact about barn owls: Their babies are some of the messiest, dirtiest, ugliest things you've ever seen, and they're noisy besides. But they grow up to be so pretty and soft...

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We do, however, have healthy populations of their charming distant cousin, the barred owl, who flies in daytime on occasion and has fabulous vocalizations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5zc-NHIipw .

My cat really really really wants to know what that weird noise is... Barn owl vocalizations though, are something else. Barn owl Fun fact about barn owls number the second: Screech owls are so called because people would hear the call of a barn owl, look around, and find the innocuous little screechie instead. (How they found the screech owl, which stands less than 8 inches tall, and is coloured like the trees, rather than the foot-plus tall white bird, I'm not quite sure. But this is what I was taught...). Screech owls have the cutest little trilling sound... Western screech owl. They're probably one of my favourite owls.

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HorsehairBraider wrote on Mon, 09 January 2012 22:41

Ah, OK, common misconception: that owls are positively huge, and can fly off with a cat, which weighs about 8 to 10 pounds. Great horned owls... the BIGGEST males... weigh in at 2.9 pounds. If you know anything about flight, you can not lift something in flight that weighs four times what you do. (Here is the source for owl biology.) It's a lot more likely the cats are being "gotten" by coyotes... or even dogs. But owls being able to pick them up and fly off with them? They physically CAN NOT do that.

Um. I'm sorry. But yes, they can.

Great Horned Owls can and do take prey larger than themselves. One of their preferred prey in southern Indiana is skunks, which average 6-7 lbs. They do occasionally take cats, though admittedly in the case of the person I know who lost two cats to owls (right in front of her eyes off the back patio, I'm sorry to say) those cats were fairly young and small at the time. You'd think she'd have learned after the first one to not let the cats out at night...

You're probably right that they don't fly far with large prey--they often eat on the ground or on things like low fences and tree stumps. But they do kill and eat animals 2-3 x their own weight. Here's a link to my favorite animal info site, if you want to know more: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/informat ion/Bubo_virginianus.html .

ETA--of course I responded before seeing other people had also weighed in with this info. What can I say, I'm an impulsive bear, when animal behavior is the topic!

[Updated on: Thu, 12 January 2012 19:58]