The Wandering Naturalist: Owls

Friday, January 18, 2008

Another Owl post

Here's a story in the Chicago Tribune about the LE Owls that are roosting on the south side of the loop.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/explore/chi-080117brotmanowls-story,0,5498599.story

What a perfect publicity subject for birds, birding and birders. There are people stopping by that aren't birders that enjoy the owls. One girl, Nina, who is 17, got to see the birds for her birthday. She was quite ecstatic about it. As they point out, "remarkable things are ahead". Only good can come from this.

However, protecting the birds should be at the back of all our minds. They don't seem to be disturbed as of now. I hope that stays that way. We should be watching the birds closely and be prepared to back off at the slightest sign of disturbing them.
Otherwise, I say enjoy them while they're there. If they don't appear to be disturbed, then it means that owls and people are living side by side. The owls get what they need and we get to enjoy them.

Now I just have to get down there before roosting season is over. I need LE Owl for a few lists. Not just my year list. lol

Happy Birding!

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Long-eared Owls in the south loop in chicago. you call these sensitive?

Here in WI and in MN, just posting LE Owl location to a listserve can get you in big trouble. Down in Chicago, LE Owls are becoming a celebrity with birders throughout the city and with a certain elementary school where these birds have taken up residence.

http://www.nbc5.com/news/15032648/detail.html

http://www.nbc5.com/slideshow/news/15031398/detail.html

So this means that LE Owls in Chicago are less sensitive than Owls in WI or MN?,
means that you can give away LE Owl locations in IL but not in WI? If I posted LE Owl locations to Wisbirdn, I'd get shot by the list owner and a few dozen other people. Because of this repression of sightings, information about these birds has not accumulated like it should. I mean, people in WI don't even post LE Owl sightings to Ebird!! much less tell anyone else about them. They are a far too understudied bird and I think we underestimate just how adaptable these birds are.

Reference: Birdchick blog: http://www.birdchick.com/2008/01/so-much-for-sensitive-owls.html#comments

Bird quotes.

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

(From William Beebe's "The Bird: Its Form and Function," 1906)

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' (I found it) but 'That's funny...'"
--Isaac Asimov

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
-- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

"I once had a sparrow alight on my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn." --Henry David Thoreau

"God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages." --Jacques Deval

"Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?" --Rose Kennedy

"No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings" --William Blake

"A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw, the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?" --E.H. Richards

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song" --Maya Angelou

"When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!" --William Blake

"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls."

--A.L. Tennyson, "The Eagle"

"This monument, perched like a duckhawk on this cliff, will scan this wide valley, watching through the days and years. For many a March, it will watch the geese go by. For many an April, it will see the redbuds come and go, and for many a May the flush of Oak-blooms on a thousand hills. Questing wood Ducks will search these basswoods for hollow limbs; golden Prothonotaries will shake golden pollen from river willows. Egrets will pose on these sloughs in August; Plovers will whistle from september skies. Hickory nuts will plop into October leaves and hail will rattle November woods. But no pigeons will pass for there are no pigeons, save only this flightless one graven in bronze on this rock.
Tourists will read this inscription but their thoughts will not take wing."
--Aldo Leopold ("on the monument to the pigeon". A Sand county almanac)