Bonding and Mating - Are they the same? + more comments about barn owl bathing

Hi everyone!

There have been a lot of questions about whether or not Molly and McGee are still "bonding", since the babies are getting so big and we are not seeing Molly and McGee bonding anymore when he brings food in.

For one thing, it's very crowded in there with the babies getting so big, and for another, the babies are becoming more and more capable of mobbing dad themselves, so he almost enters the box at his own risk, with everyone ganging up on him at once trying to grab the food out of his mouth. It's just going to get more and more rowdy until it'll be downright riotous in the nest whenever he brings food.

When the babies start hopping back and forth to a perch outside the nest (which I hope will be there by the time they go out or they will not learn to fly but will just fall to the ground, helpless). Then the babies will spend most of the night hanging around on the top of the box, or on perches near the nest, but will still gang up on dad when he arrives with food. At that point, he may even resort to dropping the food onto the gang of mobbers and flying away.

Being mobbed by your babies is hardly conducive to giving a proper greeting to your lifetime mate. However, we are also seeing that Molly is going out for extremely long periods of time. I am almost 100% sure (with live animals and personalities we can almost never say we are 100% sure of anything)...that they are bonding while she's out of the nest.

People have asked me about penetration and other details, wondering why they would mate while they still have babies, speculating that they are mating well after the babies are growing to ensure that there's a healthy clutch. Well, let's straighten out how all this works with barn owls.

The most important thing to remember is that they have no external parts. Nope! Not like geese, not like ducks - thank God. Remember, Wesley used to both mate and bond w/ my arm, and most people who have raised a male bird of prey gets mated with.( You don't have a choice, really. Try fighting off a very determined bird of prey all day every day and you'll start to get the picture. There are programs, in fact, that take advantage of this behavior but we'll talk more about that later).

So, where are their "parts"? They're up inside the owl, nestled in with the rest of his internal organs, near the sternum. In fact, I used to "sex" birds for zoos and private bird breeders by inserting a tiny optical tube through the ribs of an anesthesized bird and peering in to see if they had ovaries or testes in there. The ovary looked smooth and the testes looked wrinkly w/ millions of little tubes all jammed together, making sperm.

With everything way deep inside, the owls mate by pressing their cloaca together. The male releases a tiny drop of sperm and it travels down a little tube to the surface of the cloaca. When they press together, the drop is transferred onto the female, and the little sperms swim up a tube to her ovaries.

It's amazing that they manage to mate at all with all the feathers and lack of parts.

But, much like humans do, owls use aspects of their mating ritual to greet each other. Humans use hugging and kissing as a nonsexual greeting, not just as a precursor to mating. Owls mimic the mating behavior to greet each other - only mates do this.

The bonding that we've seen inside the nest is not to insure that the clutch is complete. It's way too late for that. But they will mate to produce the next set of eggs at some point along the way. It's highly likely that they'll have another clutch immediately following this one, possibly with a little bit of overlap. In S. California, they may even produce 3 sets of babies in one nesting season. Remember, it's only April and nesting season can last through September.

In the world of Barn owls, there is no other social group. They do not flock, herd, gather, school, or live in prides. The mated pair is the limit of their social connections, other than the babies during the time when they're raising them. But after the babies are on their own, the mated pair is still together, bonding, preening, snuggling and cuddling, making sweet little sounds only for each other which are barely even audible to anyone else.

They're completely devoted to each other for life.

Young owls do make mistakes, which is one reason so few live through their first year. I mention this because I think Molly might be spending too much time away from the babies. It is true, however, that we are not able to observe how close she is to the nest when she's out. She may be nearby.

But there's an interesting comparison between Molly and Owlivia, who is in the same little area called San Marcos. Yes! There is another barn owl box to compare to Molly and McGee, which is the box containing Owlivia and Owliver! They have 5 babies. Owlivia does not leave the nest but stays with her babies. THIS is what I'm used to seeing.

It may be that I've accidentally skewed my own observations by inadvertently watching mostly the nests of very experienced barn owls. Since Molly is a new mother (I'm pretty sure she is), she may not be settled in to how to do things. OR she may be out hunting because there isn't quite enough food being delivered by McGee, or she may be restless.

Back to the bonding vs. mating question, I think they'll bond every day for the rest of their lives as a greeting - Wesley certainly did with me, but he only rarely "produced" anything, so he clearly was not mating. During nesting season, though, he tried to lure me to "nests" and did "produce". I don't think it's possible to know the difference through observation, except to know that they can't possibly be mating every single time they greet each other throughout the year.

This confusion between bonding and mating has no doubt led to some false conclusions by naturalists, bird watchers, and biologists in the past. But it's well known, now, that there's a difference.

Here's an interesting fact - biologists now use this behavior by their imprinted, unreleasable birds (parrots do this also) to help breeding programs for endangered birds. They wear a hat with a little plastic rim around the top that catches the output of the amorous male as he mates with his human. His "output" is then collected and send to breeding programs that artificially inseminate the females. Voila' another generation of an endangered bird, ready to be eventually released into the wild. Isn't biology fun?

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About Molly and her flyabouts:
She sometimes comes back wet-ish. I say wet-ish because she is not at all waterlogged. The majority of her feathers are dry underneath, with mainly the tips of her feathers being wet. This way she can still fly. Her leg feathers are pretty soaked though. I wonder if she's standing in dewy foliage or going into the sprinklers somewhere or actually wading into a body of water.

Wesley used to enjoy being sprinkled while I took a shower, which gave him the satisfaction of getting a bit of a bath, without becoming so waterlogged he couldn't fly.

When he took a full bath, though, he would not be able to fly or even lift his wings up fully. He weighed probably more than twice his body weight when his feathers were completely soaked to the skin.

Two items were found online - The first is a sequence of photos of a barn owl taking a serious bird bath - immersing himself until waterlogged. The second is a video of a barn owl who not only takes a bath in the sprinklers, he anticipates that it's almost time for the sprinklers to start and stands on the lawn waiting for them to turn on.

Owls can tell time within some parameters - this one was off by a little, but he still got his bath! Note that both owls must have felt very secure that they would not be attacked, because they threw caution to the wind Most owls are very alert and cautious even when sleeping but these guys really knew they were safe. Either that or they were young owls being very, very stupid.But I think these owls have assessed their territory well enough to know the patterns and to know that there probably isn't a predator near. Finally, notice that both are taking a bath in broad daylight. Barn owls are mostly nocturnal but they are known to go out during the day sometimes.

Enjoy!

Stacey

Barn owl bathing: http://www.peterbagnall-wildlifeimages.co.uk/Barn%20Owls_page_1.htm


Owl in sprinklers video (Great Horned?): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0fIBrsyu0A

The barn owl in the sprinklers acts just like Wesley did when he would hang upside down off the shower rod - same wild positions. This owl almost turns a summersault at one point near the end, he's so intent upon putting his wings up and face down. His feathers are fluffed to the absolute maximum, just like Wesley's during a shower. When Wesley started doing this in 1986 or so, maybe late 1985, it had never been reported. Now the internet is full of owls bathing!

(Note: only my text is copyrighted to me, not the internet links.)