You Can Call Me Owl

Juvenile American Barn Owls

My life-long approach to wildlife photography got turned on its head last month by a baby owl.

As a photographer I want to create images that convey a personal connection with my subject, while at the same time I try to avoid any real-life personal interaction that would be stressful for the animal. That usually means using long lenses and keeping a respectful distance.

For several weeks I've been watching and photographing a family of Barn Owls nesting in a palm tree in downtown Benicia. The nest itself was well-hidden and protected until early June when a crew arrived and trimmed off most of the tree’s branches. Suddenly the nest was completely exposed - a boon for local photographers and birders but a precarious situation for the five little owlets.

A litter of Barn Owls

The Barn Owl paparazzi

On June 20 I arrived at the nest for another photo session. I wasn’t surprised to see that Ok Kyong Hanrahan, a friend and fellow member of First Street Arts, had also just arrived with her camera. What I didn’t expect was that one of the owlets had fallen from the nest and was now huddled on the sidewalk at the base of the tree.

Uh-oh. What now?

Suddenly my “keep your distance and let nature take its course” rule no longer seemed relevant. After all, it was human activity that had exposed the nest to danger in the first place. Now we were looking at a baby owl in a potentially life-threatening situation, and we felt we needed to get involved.

The bird appeared unhurt and we knew the adults would continue feeding it wherever it was, but we were concerned for its safety. Benicia’s coyotes are well-known, and even an encounter with a cat or a raccoon could be fatal for a little owl that can’t yet fly. Ok and I both started calling wildlife rescue centers.

I was the first to get a call back, from Lindsay Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek. After a series of phone calls and texts with both Lindsay Wildlife and Bay Raptor Rescue, I was advised to capture little Owl Sharptalon, keep him or her warm and safe overnight, and come to Lindsay’s wildlife hospital first thing in the morning. Ok kept an eye on the bird while I went home to get a suitable container, and Owl Pacino was soon settled in my office for the night – safe and warm, but certainly confused, scared, and hungry. My granddaughters could not have been more thrilled, and wanted to keep Weird Owl Yankovic as a pet.

  

Saturday morning was busy at the wildlife hospital. In just the twenty minutes or so that it took me to deliver Owl Franken and fill out the paperwork, I saw people bring in a gopher snake trapped in garden netting, a baby opossum that a dog had picked up, a Great Horned Owl stuck in a piece of fencing, a crow with a broken wing, an injured woodpecker, and an unidentified baby songbird.

  

I was given a receipt and a phone number I could call for updates. On Monday I learned that Owl Capone had been injured in the fall from the nest, needed four stitches for a cut, and was dehydrated, probably from not eating for at least 24 hours. A few days later I received another update – our little friend was gaining weight and healing nicely.

Meanwhile, back at the nest, more people seemed to be gathering each day to watch the owl family grow up, and some of them had heard the story of the fallen chick. I wrote a story for our local paper, the Benicia Herald, which ran on Sunday's front page.

 

The quintessential small-town paper

The four other siblings, of course, have continued to grow up and are beginning to fledge. One seems to have left already, while the other three are making exploratory flights around the neighborhood each night and staying close to the nest tree to sleep during the day. It won’t be long before they have all moved out to start families of their own.

Siblings can be a real nuisance sometimes

This nest is getting crowded!

Leaving the nest

Evening flight

And an update: I just spoke with the rehabber, who told me that after two weeks of living in a "hack box" - a sort of halfway house for recovering raptors - Owl Gore has been released and is getting on with the business of being a Barn Owl. 

Whooooo are you looking at? (Just kidding. Barn Owls don't give a hoot - they screech.)