Ground Owls, part 2

This is a continuation of the article published last week. You may want to go back and read it so that the information is complete. I would like to thank www.owls.com for this article information.

Habitat: Burrowing Owls are found in open, dry grasslands, agricultural and range lands, and desert habitats often associated with burrowing animals, particularly prairie dogs, ground squirrels and badgers. They can also inhabit grass, forb, and shrub stages of pinyon and ponderosa pine habitats. They commonly perch on fence posts or on top of mounds outside the burrow. Burrowing Owls have been reported to nest in loose colonies. Such groupings may be a response to a local abundance of burrows and food, or an adaptation for mutual defence. Colony members can alert each other to the approach of predators and join in driving them off. During the nesting season, adult males forage over a home range of 2 to 3 square kilometres. Ranges of neighbouring males may overlap considerably. A small area around the nest burrow is aggressively defended against intrusions by other Burrowing Owls and predators.

Distribution: America: Burrowing Owls are present in North America, and breed across the grassland regions of southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitobaand. They occur in all states west of the Mississippi Valley, breed south through the western and mid-western States. A separate subspecies is found in Florida and the Carribean Islands (Athene cunicularia floridana). They extend south into Mexico, Central America and South America but populations have declined in many areas due to human-caused habitat loss or alteration. Birds from the northern part of the U.S. and Canada are migratory.

British Columbia: Historically, Burrowing Owls in British Columbia bred mainly in the Okanagan-Similkameen and south Thompson basins, with occasional records over a slightly wider area in southern British Columbia - east to the Kootenay River valley, north to Horsefly in the interior and north to Comox on the coast. Since 1928, only three nest sites have been located: one at Chopaka in the lower Similkameen Valley (1943), another at Okanagan Landing (until 1963), and a third on the West Bench near Penticton (1970). Burrowing Owls in this area were designated threatened in 1979 and reconfirmed as threatened in 1991. Upon re-examination in 1995, the Burrowing Owl was uplisted to endangered. They are apparently now found only at the reintroduction sites near Osoyoos/Haynes Lease and Kamloops, and there may still be a few isolated nesting pairs in the

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