Successful branching and continuing to discredit 'scientists'

Thank GOD for all of you who continued to put the pressure on Carlos to put up a branching system. He did it all the while screaming about how it was just toys for owls, it was to appease "worry warts", it was akin to putting in pools and tennis courts...
And at every opportunity, making every effort in the world to discredit scientists, meaning me, I suppose, since I'm the only scientist who's been continuously advising people about this box and answering questions about barn owl behavior.

There was yet another Union Tribune article about Carlos and "his" owls and in it, Carlos made injurious and disingenuous statements about "owl scientists" and claimed to have "discovered" new things and "proven scientists wrong"...sigh. I've been asked to address this, so I will. But it's wearying, truly. For a scientist to continually have to address the lies spread by a total nonscientist is kind of a waste of time, except that this person has the ear of a huge number of people for whatever reason, so..here goes. My reluctant addressing of these statements...

First, this whole thing makes me sad and discouraged for the owls themselves and for the scientists who've put their lives and hearts and souls and LOVE into understanding the owls and trying to help others understand these precious, precious beings. That it should descend so far into the murky depths of human psychological issues, hype, grandstanding, vaudeville, is wearying and just very, very sad.


So..Ok..about his claim that he has "proven the scientists wrong" about how "owls don't eat the entrails"...in my book, which he ought to try reading before he continues to claim that he alone has trumped all of the decades of owl scientists' work...I say that "the mouse, the whole mouse, and just the mouse" is needed. Now, I did NOT say that they can ONLY eat mice, but in context, I said that when people keep owls and try to feed them slices of meat rolled in calcium, the owls develop a terrible metabolic bone disease, or glass bone syndrome..it cripples them for life and is terribly painful, w/ bones constantly breaking.

So, in talking about how people w/ captive owls must feed them the WHOLE mouse, I discussed how the entrails are important to the owl because it contains all kinds of enzymes and the food the mice has eaten. But they do not prefer it. Wesley, who is not the only example - I've studied nearly 100 wild owl nests - but Wesley would carefully dissect out the entrails and fling the against the wall, on the floor, wherever, SOMETIMES!

KEY WORD: SOMETIMES!

He ALSO ate the mouse whole, a LOT of the time. I even included a picture of him eating a mouse whole. I'm not sure which versions have which pictures so please don't say "My book doesn't have it" if it doesn't. There are many versions:
The UK Version
American
Chinesee (Mandarin AND Cantonese)
Taiwanese
Korean
Portuguese
Italian
German
German - Readers' Digest Condensed Book
Polish

As far as I know. There is also the large print edition and the auditory CDs, which I doubt have pictures.

I am amazed at the continual attempts to publicly discredit and misquote me or other scientists. No scientist anywhere said they do not eat entrails! Of COURSE THEY DO!

Ok, now what are the other new slanders against the good reputation of the Caltech owl scientists and other hard working field and lab scientists around the world who have been studying barn owls for well over 100 years?

Oh..that Branching is just a "made up word"....well, so is Ustream, Astronaut, Freeway, Astroturf, Mall, Suburb, how far back need we go?
Cannon, rifle, gun, gunpowder, pennicillin, Gorilla (not known to be a real animal until about 1910), hominid, Cat Scan, DNA, genome, microscope...

But that is an "old" accusation. Lemme check what the new ones are for a second here....AH YES!

That owls won't fly in the rain.

No scientist, including me, ever said that. It's a deliberate twisting of scientists saying that a completely waterlogged owl can't fly. COMPLETELY WATERLOGGED. And that owls are not waterproof IN THE WAY THAT OTHER BIRDS ARE. That does not mean that they are completely grounded if it rains, for pete's sake. or if it snows. Some water runs off the flight feathers.

In fact, didn't I say earlier that as long as they are not completely waterlogged underneath, that they are fine? When we were discussing how Molly would come in slightly wet, I said that she wasn't deeply wet. Just the tips of her feathers were wet but the deep part of her feathers were completely dry.

Well, I guess it's time for people to start writing letters to the editor of the San Diego Union Tribune, eh?

Can't have them misquoting scientists or lauding Carlos as being better than all scientists because of his one time observation of one set of barn owls w/ one clutch. Even then, he refused to understand or accept some of the most well known and documented facts about owls, such as BRANCHING.

In answer to other questions - NO THEY ARE NOT HIS OWLS! All owls belong to the US Government because they are a protected species. It matters NOT whose property they are on, nor how famous that person thinks he is because of aforementioned owls.

ALL OWLS Are The Property Of the U.S. Government - Regulated by the Dept of Fish and Wildlife federally, and the Dept of Fish and Game in California.

I think the flashing is excessive enough to possibly damage the retina of the baby owls. An occasional flash, maybe But not this continual barrage whenever one makes a move. And the point one commenter made about how it may get them used to flashing lights to the point where they may be more likely to fly into car lights, thinking they're harmless, is well made. We do not know how our messing w/ nature might affect it in the future, which is why it is against the law to harrass a nest of barn owls in any way. It's up to the officers of Fish and Game to decide how much flashing becomes harrassment. But they might decide it's too much.

Also, there are SO MANY AMAZING wildlife photographers who've taken much more compelling pictures IN THE WILD that I would be surprised if National Geographic were to choose an owlbox for an article, unless it was for a cautionary article against the way people are exploiting sensitive barn owls and how clumsy the average human is when they try to mess with wildlife about which they know very little. THAT, they might do.

I'm not angry, by the way. I'm saddened at how easily misinformation is gobbled up and printed by the media and by individual people. If someone is not an expert in their field, take what they say w/ a grain of salt!

If they're obviously desperate for attention and limelight to the point where their neediness is like a flashing sign, then take their word with another grain of salt. Use the uncommon, common sense.

Might I also point out that if one is sooo weary of this full time 24/7 "job", why spend time at a ustream convention? Why continue to exhaust oneself? It makes a cute ending to a news story to say one can't wait for this to be over, but I've been to a lot of these online webcam things, and this is the ONLY one where the owner of the webcam keeps putting himself in front of the camera and going on and on about himself and his life and how he got recognized at the Mexican restaurant. The others just keep the cam on the birds and that's it.

What I'm saying is, it does not HAVE to be a 24 hour job. If one truly doesn't want it to be, then one needn't do it!

ANYWAY, it's a sad world we live in when someone has to discredit EVERYONE ELSE to feel like they have any kind of place in this world. Most of the people I know who are true experts do not spend their time trying to discredit each other. They cooperate with each other, share data, have dinner w/ each other, that sort of thing.

Imagine if I came on here and said, "Don't read Farley Mowat's book! Don't read Sy Montgomery! Don't read Marc Bekoff! Don't read Jane Goodall! And for God's sake, don't even think about reading Berndt Heinrich! Ignore the wonderful new book out by Jeff Guidry - An Eagle Named Freedom! It's waaay too inspiring! Fugetaboutit! ONLY READ MY BOOK! OVEr and over and over. NO OTHER BOOKS ALLOWED!"

HAHAH! Now I'll be quoted as having said that. Sigh.

But seriously, those are great authors and I will RECOMMEND THEM TO YOU rather than try to diss them or put them down or be threatened by them! It's aLL GOOD! Read them ALL! They're my favorite authors too! Good for them! They've worked their entire lives on what they're writing about - not a couple of months!

Anyway, It's time for someone to start writing letters to the editor at San Diego Union Tribune.

I probably won't. If it gets too out of hand I may ask them to retract some of their statements and put in an error correction saying that these are not true statements. But I'm too busy doing other stuff that I think is more important, like the Barn Owl Alliance - trying to educate and bring change to the way owlboxes are installed and built in this country. The English have been through all this and their laws reflect it. We need to learn from them about how to properly care for our precious wild ones with whom we share this earth.

-Stacey

ps: i just got up but I feel tired already and need a nap. This is all just very sad to me.