Burrowing Owl - - (Athene cunicularia)

Wildlife Note Card Photography by Steven Holt

Burrowing Owls often perch on fence posts and dirt mounds in open country, searching for mice, insects and other small prey. Since they are active in the daytime, they rely heavily on vision and lack the prominent facial disks which help nocturnal owls locate prey by sound alone. Burrowing Owls live in abandoned ground squirrel and prairie dog burrows in the west and gopher tortoise burrows in Florida. The pair chooses a nest site together, and the female remains in the burrow, fed by the male, while laying and incubating eggs. When their young are two to four weeks of age, the females frequently move to new burrows, leaving their original burrows to the fleas. Young owls deter predators by mimicking rattlesnakes: an early naturalist, fooled by their rattling calls, believed that owls and rattlesnakes shared burrows. Burrowing Owls have lost nest sites due to the widespread eradication of prairie dog towns and are threatened by pesticides and habitat destruction today.

Special thanks to Keith Iding for scanning the cards.