Stacey O'Brien : Wesley the Owl

I'm back - thanks for your comments!

2011-08-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

Thank you all so much for your kind comments about the book, Wesley, and your good wishes! I haven't been on the blog because I was staying with my Dad and his wife as my Dad was dying. He died and I've been home for awhile grieving and trying to process it all. I apologize for not posting or answering comments for so long! I will get caught up, though.

When I got home, I found that my dog had an intestinal blockage all the way from the end of her small intestine to the exit of her stomach and could not eat at all. She was nearly starved to death. It took me a little while to figure this out, since she still ate a little bit and drank water and did some elimination....she's always been a very picky and slow eater. But finally I realized she was in trouble and it's been a long road back and has taken my nearly undivided attention, starting with syringe feeding her colostrum, then oils that would help her to pass on the huge mass of stuff (there was even a bent nail in her intestine!). Most of it was hairballs. Her brother has been shedding like crazy, and when she plays with him, she pulls on his fur and probably was swallowing a lot of it. Anyway, she is now gaining weight but I'm still spending most of my conscious time with her.

Those of you who work in raptor and other animal rescue - Good job! I have the utmost respect for people who do this. It's hard, messy work, and you are working with animals who will never bond to you. Yet, it's got to be the most rewarding work ever for an animal lover! The opportunity to work so closely with a wild one, and to help these beauties to return to the wild, or if not that, to at least be safe, warm, and fed. That's what every animal wants, really, including humans!

In answer to Chana's comment, I cope w/ the migraines probably a lot like you do. The animals really help a lot to keep my mind off of it. I do NOT let myself get into self pity even for a second (I think about all the people who were born into horrible circumstances like slums in some places where they can't even get clean water and certainly can't get any medical care at all..and then I feel so lucky to be able to get medical help, food, water, and to have a roof over my head at all...). I also pray and make sure I don't get too isolated. I have a few friends with whom I've been very close for many years, and we talk on the phone almost daily. That helps - to stay socially connected. My disability keeps me pretty much home most of the time and often in bed, so the phone is my lifeline. I made sure I have free long distance and only pay a set fee every month - kind of like Vonage but it's through my cable company. Hmm..what else. Well, the hamsters keep me laughing and loving, and of course, Fiona, my dog.

I have not written a book for small children yet. Someone else wrote a childrens' book called "Wesley the Owl" but it's not by me! It's a self published book and I've never read it so I don't know if they're telling my story or not.

A lot of little kids read the regular book. The vast majority of parents (with a few exceptions) seem to have no issue with either letting their child read it, or reading it aloud to them.

However, I DO want to write a book for very small children. I just haven't done it yet.

I'm writing about my hamsters right now - believe it or not they ARE so interesting. So full of personality and fun and intensity and, yes, intelligence. They each have their own individual personalities and quirks and logic. I never get tired of them. Each one is a surprise and I've averaged about 40+ hamsters at a time for the last 12 years (they are each in their own separate cage, because teddy bear hamsters will kill each other if in the same cage, unless they're still babies). I'm also writing some about the rescue animals I've worked with and their stories. Right now, the format is a bit like the All Creatures Great and Small books, not to imply that I'm as good a writer as James Herriott by any stretch of the imagination!

Thank you all for your kind support and for taking the time to write to me! It really encourages me a lot to read what you have to say! I wish you all the very best in life - joy, peace, health, friendship, love.

Stacey

Dogs can read, like Gorillas

2011-03-07T01:06:00.000-08:00

Check out this link! Koko the Gorilla is using words and symbols to communicate, now. She has a pet dog who learned the techniques just by watching Koko's lessons. Pretty soon, the dog was using his/her nose to point at the cards w/ the symbols or words on them. You can teach your dog how to use the cards to communicate by downloading the chart that they're using for the Gorilla. They apparently have instructions for teaching your dog to communicate with you, using words and symbols!

Here is the link:

http://www.koko.org/news/news_090706_Dog_Lang_Board.html

Enjoy!

-Stacey

Fiona and Drinian - Colorado Mountain Dogs

2011-02-18T23:50:00.000-08:00

After being in Colorado, it was such a joy to come back to my BELOVED Colorado Mountain Dog, Fiona. When I'm gone, she often stays with her brother, Drinian, from the same litter. Fiona and Drinian arrived together from Colorado and I was there with my friend, Cat, to meet them. Yes, her name is CAT. Fiona is the princess on the left. Drinian is the prince on the right. He's a little bigger...she's only about 60 lbs (probably the smallest Colorado Mountain Dog ever produced) and Drin is edging up to 200 pounds, which is more "normal". Of course, he is male, and in dogs, the male is the larger (which is weird to me. I'm used to birds of prey where the female is the larger of the two).

These two are the best of friends. They play and roughhouse all over the yard, with Fiona keeping up a snarling that you wouldn't believe, but it's all in fun. She's usually such a quiet dog! They sleep together, eat together,...they do everything together. Still, they also wear each other out. When Fiona comes home, they both sleep almost nonstop for a week or so before getting back to "normal", whatever that is.

This time, when I went to pick her up, my mother came, too. We went down the street and visited Cat's horse, who lives with two goats and a pig! YES! The pig is highly intelligent and opinionated, and I pretty much fell in love with her. She does what she wants, when she wants, and is not cowed by the interests of humans! When Cat goes riding, there are the two white dogs, the black pig, and two black and white goats strolling along beside her. What a sight.

The pig made it very clear that we were to rub her tummy immediately, and we did so, with great enthusiasm. She was clean and cute! She made me think of Sy Montgomery's pig Christopher Hogwood from "The Good, Good Pig".

If you haven't read "The Good Good Pig" what are you waiting for? It's a wonderful book! Sy misses Christopher like I miss Wesley. And I miss Wesley as if he had just died yesterday. I miss him viscerally.

I did a talk at the G2 Art Gallery in Venice Beach, CA. last week, and Luna was there. Luna is an unreleasable female barn owl, whose human is a dedicated rehabilitator named Christina. It was so great to see both of them, and being able to interact with Luna made me miss Wesley all that much more. Luna is all personality and I love her. It's always a privilege to work alongside one of Wesley's "cousins" and it always makes me long for Wesley.

But at least Fiona is there for a good cuddle to ease the longing. Fiona is a dear, dear dog. She has a gentle spirit and a quiet way about her, yet she can be very protective at the same time. You can see in the picture that she's smiling! Don't these two dogs make a great pair?

Fiona is my dear, dedicated, beloved girl and I love her so much. She sleeps on the bed with me and is a great cuddler. I don't know how she stays so clean, but she's almost fanatical about it, and that makes it easier than ever to cuddle with her.

Sunday will ber her and Drinian's second birthday. Happy Birthday Fiona and Drinian!

Stacey

Finding the GOLD...(warning: Verbose=ON)

2011-02-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

I woke up thinking about all the important things I've learned in my field, that were not a result of lectures or books, and how I learned them. I think it's pretty important to think about this, especially if you're a kid who wants to learn about a certain subject or hobby, or a young person starting out in a chosen field.

What triggered these thoughts? I've been watching "Mutant Planet" and marveling at how well they explain the way species in an ecosystem are completely dependent upon each other, and how they're perfectly adapted to their exact environment. Take away one aspect of that environment and they are completely undone.

Recently, they've been showing an episode about the lemurs of Madigascar. Madigascar is one of the most unusual, amazing, "Dr. Seuss" looking places on the planet. And I love the lemurs. I used to work w/ lemurs - not work in the true sense of working, but I fed and cared for them and spent many, many hours with them, being groomed by them and grooming them back, just learning about their ways just like I did with Wesley. This was at that job I had before the owls.

I learned soooo much about primates in general there, and certain species specifically. But how did I learn so much if my job was just cleaning up after them, feeding them, and hanging out with them?

I kept my eyes and ears open and I was raging curious about everything. That's how I've learned a lot of what I've learned in the great halls of academia, or in the trenches of fieldwork or the drudgery/excitement of wildlife rehab. I've kept my head down and learned from listening to those around me. NO, not the gossip stuff. Toss it. No one needs it. "who is with who, who said what to who"...you can get that stuff anywhere there are humans. No, I'm talking about the nuggets.

The Nuggets that are Pure Gold.

Examples from my life at Caltech:
I've got my ears wide open because the great man Himself is in the lab. He is the head of the lab - the primatologist who studies these lemurs and is working to help with breeding programs aimed at keeping them from going extinct (perhaps Madagascar can be reforested then repopulated. Maybe we can find land in the USA w/ a similar climate, Hawaii? ..and plant miles of it in the same way as Madagascar and re-release lemurs there to flourish).

He tells a horror story about some institution where the caging wasn't done quite right and a monkey's tail was caught in it and he died over the night because no one was there that night to see it and he hung upside down all night and died. HORROR! You mean, that can be the consequence of the smallest mistake in proper caging? YES! I took that lesson to heart and when I had Wesley I was exTREMELY careful about every aspect of his environment.

I learned a lot by listening to his conversations w/ his post-docs while I was feeding or grooming monkeys nearby. It wasn't until I saw the Lemur episode of "Mutant Planet", though, that I realized just how much I did know about both lemurs and Madagascar. I knew pretty much everything they talked about, minus a few recent discoveries! How?

The Big Guy would come home from a trip to Madagascar and I'd hear him telling people about it. "We discovered 6 new prehistoric fossil types of lemur"...."There was a huge lemur only a few hundred years ago, probably wiped out by early deforestation when man first came to the island - the size of a gibbon or chimp!"..."The deforestation is wiping out the entire island...it's so frustrating - how can we work with the natives to convince them not to destroy their own environment? Theyr'e talking about a new concept that can help these areas - Ecotourism, they're calling it. If the forest calls in tourism, the people will begin to value the forest for the money it brings in. It's worth a shot!"

Or

Listening to him AGONIZING over a sister organization that keeps interfering with the baby lemurs. This institution to the north is trying to establish a similar breeding program to replenish the earth with lemurs (oh if you were to meet one, you'd feel as if the earth would just die if we didn't have lemurs! They're sweet to a fault, innocent. affectionate, and they look like they were made up by Dr. Seuss). This lab has a STUPID policy where every time a lemur gives birth, the idiot scientists (yes, some scientists can also be idiots - this is not a contradiction in terms here), would gown up, put on gloves and face masks to protect the baby lemur from human germs (we share diseases with primates, even prosimians), and reach into the nesting box and pull the baby out of the screaming mother's arms.

The mother probably didn't even recognize them as her friends, with that getup they were wearing.

Then they'd weigh, take down blood, measure the baby - all the things that they think they need for their records...these people have lost sight of the Big Picture in a HUGE WAY. They think it's about the scientific method, whereas their scientific method is the reason for their failure. Here's why:

They return the baby to the now hysterical mom and tiptoe out of the area (after all, everyone knows you should not disturb a new mother primate).

But it's too late. Some switch has gone off in the mother's brain or hormonal system. And just like clockwork, and in a scientifically verifiable way, the mother quits caring for the baby. She casts him aside, throws him over her shoulder like a piece of sacking, she throws him out the door of the high nesting box. Within hours the baby is dead. EVERY SINGLE BABY THAT HAS EVER BEEN BORN AT THIS FACILITY HAS DIED THIS WAY!

So what do the esteemed scientists at this esteemed academic facility DO? They call the Big Guy Primatologist at Caltech with their lament. "It didn't work again! She abandoned the baby! What do we do? Oh what oh what?"

Primatologist is getting sick of these calls. Getting sick of telling them NOT to take the baby out and weigh and measure it. To stay the H AWAY from the new family for about 2 weeks other than going in quickly to quietly clean and feed then GET OUT!

They never take his advice and he keeps getting these sad calls.

So one day he loses his temper (in the rather quiet way that a dignified scientist loses his temper). He vents to his postdocs.
I hear the whole story. I LEARN. I LEARN AND LEARN AND LEARN!

And LEARN!

So why am I telling you this?

If you're 12, 14, 16....and you can't get where you want to be yet, but you know you REALLY want to learn more than you're learning now, what can you do? If you've just gotten out of college but you need experience, what can you do to learn more, to gain experience?

You can get a grunt job in a GREAT PLACE and keep your eyes and ears open. That's huge. It's a lot more than people realize. A lot of people eschew "grunt jobs" but they can be your best bet. They can be GOLD for you if you know how to work it.

The way you work it is you learn as much as you can - actively. You listen, you watch, you ask questions.

Let's say you get to volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center, but you're only allowed to clean cages. Maybe they let you help cut up food. WONDERFUL! This is your way in to learning about how to run a wildlife center - every aspect of it.

As you clean an enclosure, take a good, hard look at it. Why does every bird of prey enclosure have a long, thick piece of wood running diagonally up to the top perches, and why is it covered in astroturf? Sure, astroturf might be easier to clean than just wood, but that can't be the only reason, can it? If you don't figure it out, ask someone. Answer: When we get injured birds of prey who will never be able to fly again, are they supposed to sit on the damp, cold ground? Is it even normal for their feet to sit on the ground? Won't they become very anxious on the ground, where their instincts tell them theyr'e in big trouble? If they're that terrified, could the stress kill them? Yes it could. So you give them a way to walk up to the kind of higher perch they're used to. But wait, there's not just a perch up there, there's also an astroturf platform that goes back into a corner. In fact, when you clean the cage, the birds crowd into that high corner and threaten you. It gives them a stable place to rest if their balance is off. Say they only have one wing - it's much more difficult to perch naturally, so they go to the platform to rest.

The astroturf gives them something to hang on to, especially if they're crippled in some way and thrown off balance.

Now you know.

Why are they using netting in the big eagle flight cages instead of just a roof? Could it be because the big snow storm of '88 collapsed all the roofs nearly killing the animals inside and the center learned a hard lesson?

This is the GOLD that you can dig up from a grunt job. I have learned as much in life by keeping my eyes and ears open as I have from study - and THAT is saying a LOT. Cuz I am ALWAYS reading.

I read so much that, when I was a kid, my mom sometimes had to take a book away and hide it so I would sleep. Otherwise I'd be up all night w/ a flashlight, my pillow folded in half so that when I heard her coming I could flip the folded half of the pillow over the book and act like I'm asleep. Then she'd leave and I'd resume reading. She couldn't help but notice if I was completely exhausted the next day. So she had to sometimes STOP me from reading. I read while I walked, I read during recess, I read in the car, in the bathtub, at the table - my Dad is the same way. I'm not saying we're antisocial, just that we read a lot.

But still, I've learned more from keeping my eyes and ears open and learning from people who know more than I do.

And never thinking I know all of it.

If I were a kid who was frustrated and wanting to get on with things, I'd look for a place where i can learn a heck of a lot from the people around me, while doing the most menial of work nearby.

And it's amazing the college level stuff you can learn from TV shows like Mutant Planet - quality shows that explain how everything goes together. We used to learn that kind of stuff in college lectures!

And don't forget that itunes has a free university - you can hear physics lectures from MIT, you can hear the stuff you're interested in, by the best lecturers in the world, from the best schools in the world (Harvard, MIT, etc) by just downloading it! WOW! We never had anything like that! If you took physics, it was the FIRST TIME you had heard ANY of it and you were going to be tested on it in a week! NOW you have a huge edge! You can hear and learn it all before you even TAKE physics. That is also Pure GOLD!

Sorry if this seems lectury. In a book I'd weave all this through a story of some kind but that takes a lot longer to craft and I just wanted to say it right out.

The next book will have Wesley in it, but it's broader. It's about many of the animals I've loved and known, and their stories. Wesley was there all along, of course, and had his strong opinions, which I will write about. But I can't just retell his story again, right? I imagine you'll want to hear about some of the other amazing animals I've encountered, loved, and known. They all have their story to tell, and such stories they are!!!

Happy Ground Hog Day (I was born on Groundhog Day - the ONLY day we have that's named after an animal. I've always loved that!)

-Stacey

Barefoot in the Snow

2011-01-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

I've been in Colorado recently. I am so enjoying the snow and the nice, cool weather. There's just enough snow to keep a little bit of groundcover and to make everything beautiful - white snow, blue skies, green trees.

Ever since I got sick, I run waay too hot. I'm ALWAYS too hot, so I'll be wearing a summer sundress in 20 degree weather, when everyone else is wearing jackets and boots.

So when it gets to be a balmy 40-50 degrees (remember, it's extremely dry here, so it's not a damp cold at all), I like to step outside barefoot and walk in the snow to cool off.

I've mostly just been resting here in Colorado, but even from the house I enjoy the wildlife immensely. There has been a group of 4 bucks who hang out together, who come by here daily and often sleep here, too, on Cait's land. I occasionally buy a small bag of Timothy hay to put out for them, and they seem to appreciate it. Two of the bucks are gorgeous 8 pointers, although one of them is growing a new set of points. One is almost black, he's such a dark gray, and the other is brown. Both have beautiful, thick coats, big soulful eyes, beautiful long eyelashes, delicate legs...they are just enchanting. The two smaller ones are 4 point bucks. The big, dominant guys get to eat the hay first, then they MAY let the others graze.

They've gotten used to seeing me and are not too afraid anymore.

But a funny thing happened yesterday. I went out the back door because I was too hot, and lay down in the snow to make a snow angel, in order to cool off. I puttered around for awhile, then heard what sounded like a trumpet and exhalation of breath all at once. The biggest buck had been standing right near me, in the aspens, all that time, and had been so absorbed in whatever he was doing that he hadn't noticed me, nor I him. When he suddenly realized I was right there, outside the house, he completely lost his composure, whirled on one foot, bellowed a trumpeting sound, and raced up the hill. Then he stopped and looked back at me a bit sheepishly, as if he were embarrassed for losing it so thoroughly. I bet his buddies are teasing him about trumpeting when he saw me! haha.

Then he picked his way back, acting casual, nibbling here and there at sprouts, as if to say (in the way cats do), "I meant to do that". Pretty cute.

Apparently he wasn't all that terrified because he and his gang later decided to spend the day lying around chewing their cud near the house.

The other thing I love about snow is the way it keeps a record of all the wildlife that has passed by. I'm enjoying studying the tracks of all the different characters that pass our way without our ever even knowing it. It's so quiet here that I can hear the footsteps of the deer when they come, and hear their breath and chewing sounds, while I'm lying in bed inside the house. If someone walks on the road below, I can hear their footsteps. If a car comes by, everyone hears it and wants to know who it is and what are they doing here?

This is how people were meant to live. We lived like this for millenia before we became so used to the noise of a modern city. I crave the relative silence of the wilderness!

I hope you all had a great holiday season!

-Stacey

Cute pic of a gerbil, plus I'm speaking in L.A., CA.

2010-11-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

see more Daily Squee

I couldn't resist putting up this pic of a gerbil. Hamsters are a little like gerbils and both are so cute!

Make sure you mark your calendar, or tell anyone you know in the Los Angeles area who might be interested, that I'm speaking in Los Angeles and signing books (they'll sell them there, too, if you don't have one to sign), on Dec 14. Here are the specifics:

Stacey at Audubon Center in Los Angeles
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 7:00pm
Audubon Center at Debs Park, Los Angeles, CA
The event is free and open to the public.

Hope to see you there!

Speaking in LA + Legend of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole

2010-11-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

Before I get started talking about that, let me remind any of you living near Los Angeles, CA. that I'll be speaking and signing books at the Audubon meeting on Dec 14, 2010. Keith Malone will be keeping everyone up to date. Details can be seen at the Wesley the Owl facebook, and here they are as well:

----------------------
Wesley the Owl Stacey will appear at the Audubon Center at Debs Park in Los Angeles to talk about Wesley and her 19 years with him. She will be available to answer questions and sign books. Copies of "Wesley the Owl" will be available for purchase. The event is free and open to the public.

Stacey at Audubon Center in Los Angeles
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 7:00pm
Audubon Center at Debs Park, Los Angeles, CA
---------------------

OK - About the Guardians of Ga'Hoole!
I JUST finished watching the Legend of the Guardians in my hotel room. WOW! I'm so impressed with how well they represented each species of owl! Of course, they had to take artistic license. For example, Tyto (barn owls) owls don't have a colored iris with a pupil that we can see. They have ebony black eyes with no "whites". If you see their eyes in the light, and from the side, you can tell that they do, of course, have a pupil and iris, but both are so dark that the look is one of pure black eyes. I can see why they needed to make the eyes more human, though, for the movie. Humans look to small changes in the eyes for emotion - even the slightest widening or narrowing of the pupil portrays a lot emotionally. So they took license on that. And the beaks are WAAAY smaller in the movie than they are in real life - in real life Wesley's beak reached almost all the way to his ears. The dainty part you see talking in the movie is just the pink tip that shows through the feathers. Again, that license doesn't bother me.

What thrilled me was that they really got some other details right. The feathering was just amazing, although they used different subspecies of Tyto for the characters. Hey that's ok. Tyto (barn owls) are found on every continent except Antarctica, and they look somewhat different from each other because they are different species or rather, subspecies. So the differences you see from one Tyto to another are based on the different types of Tyto. In the USA, we have Tyto Alba, which is what the main character, Soren, is. So is his younger sister, Eglantine, apparently. And she looks JUST like a baby barn owl should look at about 5 and 1/2 weeks old!

Another thing that thrilled me is the way they got the little body language aspects just right. The way they move, walk, shift their weight, all that was right on. And the way they move and use their talons was perfect. Even the fight scenes had it right - with them attacking each other w talons up, and sometimes falling while circling each other, talons locked. Birds of prey do that when fighting, sometimes falling all the way to the ground like that. People think they're mating when they do that but they're actually fighting. I've heard that some species of eagle or hawk may mate while spiraling like that, but I'm betting that's a misunderstanding. When owls are doing that, they're fighting.

Little things made a difference and they got them right. There's a moment when an owl is asked a question and his answer is "no". Instead of verbalizing it, they had the owl look to the side. That is how a barn owl says no! He looks away, off to the side. I have video of me asking Wesley a series of questions and getting yes and no answers. The "no" is him looking away to the side. These people really know their barn owls!

Another thing I loved is how they used real owl sounds throughout, even though they also had the owls speaking English w/ an Australian accent (well, hey, it's a fantasy, right?). But when an owl would fly off, he'd make a screech or sound that was accurate to his species.

They also caught the little differences between how each owl species moves and acts. Digger the burrowing owl is a perfect example in the way he flits around so fast, seeming hyper. That's how they are. I love burrowing owls and they are just like that in their body movements.

The movie starts out with the parents working with the two oldest owls on their BRANCHING LESSONS! THANK YOU!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

SO many people in the US just don't seem to understand that OWLS DO NOT GO TO THE GROUND THEN LEARN TO FLY! If they end up on the ground they are totally out of their element and are easy pickin's for predators. And that is exactly portrayed correctly in the movie. I was beyond happy to see that they showed how owls REALLY learn to fly, and that is by fly-hopping from one branch to another, literally learning what works and what doesn't by trial and error! Why is that so difficult for Americans to understand and accept? THIS IS HOW THEY LEARN TO FLY!

The people who did this movie really did their research. They really knew owls. They had the mother barn owl be significantly larger than the father. That is accurate. She is browner. That is accurate.

I remember one time I started out as a new volunteer at a bird of prey rescue and rehab center. There was one large mew with about 25 barn owls in it. The supervisor took me in there and said she had questions about barn owls that maybe I could answer. She wanted to know how to tell the males from the females and I explained that there's a continuum -- Males are very light to white on the chest and tummy, and females are brown at the far end, fading to very light brown in the middle of the spectrum. It's when they're a little bit brown and mostly white that it becomes hard to know exactly which gender the owl is. She described it perfectly when she said, "You mean, the ones who look like they've been rolling in the dust are the females? I thought they were just dirty!" That's just what they look like! Males who've been rolling in the dust!

They even got the stippled look of the eyelids and skin around the eyes right. And the way the pink talons have little pads on them and tiny padlike patterns on their feet, and how they use their talons to hold onto things, either using both, or they'll stand on one foot and use the other talon to pick something up and hold it. They just really understood how an owl's body works and moves. I've never seen anyone get it that right before.

Animators and artists almost always miss it when they try to do barn owl faces. It's like, if you don't know one personally, it's difficult to portray them. Maybe that's because they are so expressive. They really can make a lot of facial expressions because they have a lot of tiny muscles under their facial feathers, which are used to adjust the feathers on their faces to funnel sound into their ears more accurately. Some of the facial expressions were not owlish and were distinctly human, but that's to be expected. This is, after all, a fantasy and we suspend reality for it. Owls don't speak English w/ an Australian accent, for example. And the head and claw armor would weigh them down too much and would impede their main sense, which is hearing. But hey, they got so much of it right that it's amazing. And the artistry! Each feather having a dot at the end - how perfect that is!

And the little sounds each owl made (outside of the human speech) were accurate to their species.

It's a movie about good vs. evil, and has a bit of the "Luke! Use the Force" thing going on, but the visual beauty of the owls themselves and the accuracy about their lives and what makes them tick was so informative and needed in this owl-uneducated world. Owls are so mysterious and wonderful and I'm glad to see some of their mysteries shown off to the world. They are super faithful, super-loyal, cuddly w/ their mate, loving, fierce, and beautiful. What an amazing movie for all of those reasons!

I'm so happy to see owls taking their rightful place in our culture as a celebrated animal in art, popular art and fiction, books, films...even fabric and decorative items like owl lamps and owl sheets! How un! I think people are starting to realize that these creatures are highly intelligent, deeply emotional, fascinating, and beautiful, and resourceful, loyal, fierce, and are to be admired greatly! YAY! GO OWLS!

(this is a completely unbiased opinion! haha)

-Stacey

PS: I just put this up w/o editing it yet so I'm sure there are grammar and spelling mistakes but I'll deal w/ that later. I'm tired and am going to bed....my apologies for any sloppiness....

Colorado mountain dog with tiny kitten

2010-11-11T08:13:00.000-08:00

(This pic was taken by Wendy Francisco so she has the copyright on it under crackonoon ragdolls...)

This is Caspian, Wendy's dog and my dog's father, with a kitten. The kitten is obviously trying to look as big as she can by sticking all her fur out, putting her tail straight up in the air, and slightly arching her back. Yet, she's holding her ground. But the one to look at here is Caspian. He has a motherly look on his face. Fiona gets this same look when my hamsters crawl across her paws, or go right up to her, nose to nose. Kissy, one of my sweetest and most confident hamsters, sat on her haunches as squirrels do (hamsters are Syrian ground squirrels) and put one hand up on Fiona's nose like a traffic cop, clearly saying, "Back up.". Fiona DID! So cute!

Fiona, and other mountain dogs, has an instinct to protect little helpless animals against big scary predators. These dogs are solving the problems ranchers are having with mountain lions and even wolves, in the case of sheep and goats (supposedly some ranchers of goats and sheep are saying that wolves are taking some of their animals. If it's wolves or wild dogs, either way, Colorado mountain dogs completely solve the problem). They are naturally protective of all the animals of the household and property and naturally aggressive toward predators, even barking at hawks and owls eyeing the chickens!

It's amazing to see such a huge dog be so very gentle with such tiny, vulnerable animals! The only indication Fiona gives that there's a hamster on or between her paws is her tail wags. Now the hamsters are so used to her that when she walks into the hamstery (which is my master bedroom, given over to the care of hamsters), they get out of their nests to greet her and touch noses through the cage bars. She even tries to eat their food, when miss Fiona turns her nose up at the very best of dog foods!

She's the most amazing dog I've ever known or had, and I've had wonderful, wonderful dogs! Fiona is just different - gently protective, super gentle in the house, keeping to her own toys and leaving mine alone.

Sheesh, I sound like a commercial!

Anyway, this picture of Caspian with a tiny ragdoll kitten is just too cute! Wendy is one of the top breeders of ragdoll cats, and they have the run of her house, so they're all indoor cats who are used to a lot of love. If I didn't have hamsters, I'd have one of these fluffy little cloudpuffs. But i digress.

Enjoy the picture!

Yes, I'm working on my next book, but I take a looonngggg time to write a book because there are soo soo many stories to tell and things I want to say, and I start by just writing all of it, which is a LOT of pages, like 1000 pages or so, then I start to whittle it down, almost like sculpting, but w/ words, to say what I think I must say or illustrate through the stories. It takes me a long time, too, possibly because I'm not super experienced as an author. I don't blaze through like some authors. But I am definitely writing the next book, which is one reason I'm no longer online so much.

At some point I will address the issue of the Barn Owl Alliance - I do have plans for it but not the same as I originally thought, because we need more research before we can recommend exactly what should ideally go into a box, and I'm talking w/ owl box makers, rehabbers, and biologists to try to figure it all out in terms of an ideal design.

I do love the branching system that Carlos put up for Molly's babies. Obviously that worked! Also, the one Tom put up for Owlivia's babies also worked quite well. Both of those can serve as very good examples of what is needed for barn owl babies to branch.

I love how the guardians of ga'hoole books emphasize branching and explain in great detail how owlets really learn to fly. That author did her research!

Happy Fall and Happy cooler weather everyone! I wish WE had cooler weather in S. California but no...it's in the 80s again. Believe me, that does get monotonous. It's nice to have a change of seasons and I want that. Hence the desire to move to Colorado. So enjoy your change of seasons!

Maizie

2010-10-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry to report that Maizie died of her cancer. Her surgery went well but during recovery she was in the middle of fixing up her nest and she just instantly died. She was not in pain, however, and was acting completely fine - eating, being curious, grooming, making her nests. The doc got all the cancer out because it was localized to her leg, but sometimes there is a delayed reaction to surgery in these very tiny animals, called DIC, I think. I was heartbroken and couldn't bring myself to write about it for awhile.

I have fallen in love with a species that only lives about 2 years. Some of my hamsters live up to 5 years because I take extremely careful care of them, giving them supplements, getting to the vet with any problems, trimming their teeth if they have overgrowth, all the upkeep that takes attention to detail. But still, they just don't live all that long.

I've considered not having hamsters because of the ongoing heartbreak, but I've decided it's worth the heartbreak just to know them. I'd rather deal regularly with the cycle of life and death, love and loss, than live without them at all. They are such amazing, complex, magical little beings. Who knew that the Syrian Ground Squirrel had so many charms?

Many of my hamsters come to me when called by name, and they get all excited when I walk into the room, coming to the door of their cages so I can easily pick them up and snuggle with them. They kiss me on the nose and snuggle under my chin to sleep, they bark at me when they want attention...

One way I've dealt with the constant loss is to breed a special hamster so that when he or she dies, I have her or his babies. In that way, hamsters from the past still live, generations later, through their offspring.

I don't breed a lot, but maybe one litter per generation.

It's the same way with us, isn't it? We achieve some kind of immortality through our children or through those we affect, love, mentor, teach, give to...

This time, though, I bred 4 very special sisters all at once, 2 years ago. I did that because I've found that if one hamster becomes a nervous mother and starts to be unable to care for her babies properly, I can quickly foster those babies into the other litters as long as they're all the same age. So I bred these 4 sisters all on the same night (they seem to go into heat all together at the same time). It worked out well, although for the last 2 years I've had a LOT of hamsters to take care of, or to pay someone to take care of when I travel.

But that's ok. I'm home in bed most of the time and am almost always cuddling with a hamster, so they all get plenty of attention.

But now it's going to be a very difficult season, since they're all getting very old at once. I knew, of course, that this would happen. But that doesn't make it any easier to be losing so many precious friends one right after the other.

Again, it's worth it. And as I've said before, the fact that we outlive our pets is a blessing in that we are able to shepherd them gently through their old age and illnesses and death, rather than us dying first and not knowing if they'll ever be loved or treated in the way we would love and treat them.

I have made arrangements for my animals should that happen, and I highly suggest doing this. Cat and I have mutually agreed to adopt each others' dogs if something happened to one of us, and I have someone who would take my hamsters. I had someone who would have taken care of Wesley, but still, I wouldn't have wanted to have to take any chances with his future, especially with him being so sensitive and so "one person" oriented.

I guess this isn't a real "pick me up" subject, but it's part of having and loving animals, and when we take on an animal and open our hearts, we take on this part of it too. That's ok. I'm so glad I was able to be with Maizie all along and to have spent so much wonderful, magical, joyful time with her. I feel honored to have known her and to have been so trusted by her - and her such a tiny little thing, too.

I'll always love my little Maizie Daisy and will never forget her. Each one of them is an individual and is so special and so full of their own personality. It's pure delight to have shared this beautiful green earth with them!

Stacey

Pic of me and Wesley kissing, news of Fiona

2010-10-19T21:17:00.001-07:00

Wow! What lovely comments from old friends and new! Right now I'm holed up writing. I tend to hole up away from home in order to stay away from distractions. Some hotels are very doggy friendly and hamster friendly, too. Fiona, however, is with her brother and her "other mom", Cat. Yes a woman named Cat, which I imagine is short for Catherine, but I've never asked her. How odd that two of my close friends are Cat and Cait!

Anyway, Fiona is in heat, and it seems to be her first true heat, even though she's 2 years old almost. Fortunately, brother Drinian is "fixed". But still, he was thrown off by the "new" Fiona and was really upset by her being in heat at first. Now, he seems to think he is supposed to guard her, which is fine with me! Cat tells me that Fiona is starting to howl, though, so I may have to go get her for the sake of Cat and her neighbors. I don't know how bad it is or isn't.

She puts the dogs in at night, because, being instinctive guard dogs, they will run the property all night barking at every coyote or owl that comes near. They are supposed to do that kind of thing, and Colorado Mountain Dogs are working WONDERS in places like Colorado, Wyoming, Montana - places where the wolf and the mountain lion have come back. Ranchers who have Colorado mountain dogs are reporting that they now have zero losses of livestock. The Colorado Mountain Dog is part Great Pyrenees and part Anatolian Shepherd, and both of those breeds have been keeping flocks of sheep and goats safe in Europe for time immemorial. When I read about ranchers in the midwest being upset about wolves going after their goats, I think, "Well for Pete's sake, get yourself a couple of Colorado Mountain Dogs! Or if they're not available, a couple of Great Pyrenees!" The reason the Colorado Mountain Dog is a little better, is that the combination of the two breeds gives you a lithe, wolflike dog that moves like a cat on the big rocks, can turn on a dime, can leap like crazy, runs like the wind, yet has the umph of the heavy great pyrenees. A Perfect dog for those mountains.

Anyway, because Fiona and Drinian think that's what they're supposed to be doing, they are too boistrous outside at night, and Cat lives along a canyon that reaches to the sea (in fact, she can hear the horns of the big ships as they pass out at sea, echoing up the canyon right to her house).

So...they go into their own sleeping area in the garage at night. Cat says, "Go to bed" and they race to their respective beds. Fiona likes to sleep in a big airline crate for extra large dogs. There's no door on it, so she doesn't have to sleep in there but she likes it. Cat has already put a biscuit on each of their pillows. yes! So Fiona goes to her bed and eats her biscuit, and Drinian goes to his pile of blankets right outside the door of Fiona's case and eats his biscuit. Cat was curious about what their routine is when they go to bed so she started spying on them. She has a nightlight on in there for them, so she can see what they're doing.

They each eat their biscuit, then Fiona comes out to check to see what Drinian ate and look for crumbs. Drinian sticks his nose in her mouth to smell what she ate to make sure she got the same thing he did. They're so funny about food when it comes to each other. On her own, Fiona turns her nose up at food and pretends she couldn't care less about it. She doesn't like treats, for example. She will not take them. When I feed her, she doesn't run to her bowl but looks away as if bored. Eventually, she ambles past her bowl, swinging her head down and swiping a mouthful in one movement, so it is hard to tell she even took a bite. She walks away from the bowl, WELL away from it, then you hear the crunch crunch crunch and you know she's eating the bite. Then, a few minutes later, she ambles past the bowl again, swipe, amble...crunch crunch crunch. I have no idea why she is so "cool" about it, so cavalier.

BUT, when she's at Cat's house, Cat has to separate the two dogs into two different yards because they are suddenly fascinated with each other's food. Fiona is suddenly a food maven, a ravenous beast. As soon as they've both eaten, Cat opens the gate between them and they rush to finish any little bits left in each others' bowls. Sigh. silly dogs. She even gains weight when she's at Cat's because of her competition w/ Drinian over food. The grass is always greener on the other side, it's really true that people and animals think that way. It cracks me up.

have a lovely week, everyone!
Stacey

i'm really here, if you are...

2010-10-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hi! If anyone is still watching for this blog, after my severe neglect of several months, THANK YOU! I've been on a LOONNNGGG retreat, away from the internet and all the emotion and noise it can generate. I never do very well in the summer with my health, and this summer was no exception. The heat just ruins me and it's one migraine after another, and when there's no migraine, I'm recovering from the exhaustion of having had so many migraines in a row. Not that I'm complaining. I know I'm lucky to live in the USA where there is so much opportunity and comfort. It's ridiculous to even think about complaining when you're lying on a comfortable bed with enough to eat and a roof over your head. So I'm not. I'm just explaining why I haven't been getting on the internet. I did go on a long retreat, also, and when I do that, I never say when I'm going to do it or where I'm going or for how long. I've always had that tendency. And while I can no longer trek off into the high sierras alone at a whim, I can still disappear like I used to do, and think and sleep and think some more.

I've been thinking about the Barn Owl Alliance and all the work that you guys have been doing. Charlotte has been keeping me updated through Keith Malone. I haven't given up on that at all, it's just that a person can only do so much, and can only do one thing at a time, at least this person can only do so many things at one time. When I was younger and healthier I could do everything all at once, or at least I thought I could. It's an illusion of the young, I think.

I'm still on a retreat, esconced in a random hotel for now, dealing with my hamster having major surgery. This hotel allows animals and has mondo air conditioning, which is the main reason I'm here. We had the hottest days ever in recorded history in the past couple of weeks and I just couldn't stand it, even with the air conditioning on at home. California homes, even nice ones, are not built with insulation in mind. The feeling is that things never really get all that bad - heatwise or coldwise, so there's no need to get all excited about details like insulation, so a lot of the heat or air conditioning goes right out the sides of the windows, under the doors, through the mail slots. No one really worries about "drafts" in winter either. Unless they're way up in the mountains where it counts for something.

Anyway, I do apologize for being rather impossible to reach via the internet. On the other hand, I think the internet can be very invasive, so I have mixed feelings about it. But I had established a lot of contacts and feel bad about just dropping off the face of the earth. I do tend to do that, as I said, though.

I'm writing another book, now, so a lot of the writing energy that I would have been using on the blog is now being used for the book. I'm deep in the rough draft right now.

I adhere to the Steven King method, as he explains in his book, "On Writing". I didn't KNOW I adhered to his method until I read the book and thought, "Wow, that's exactly how I do it, too." Not that it's rocket science - few things are.

There are only so many ways to go about it, right? The first thing I do is what I call "Making the fabric", where the finished quilt would be the book. Before you make a quilt, you have to go out and buy yards and yards of fabric, some of this, some of that...if you're not really sure how it's going to look yet, you end up buying a lot of fabric that will not make it into the quilt at the end, but you may take some pieces from each of the fabrics for the final quilt. But you can't put pieces together if there is no fabric to mess around with in the first place. Making the fabric - or the first draft - is done in private, almost in secrecy.

I just let my subconscious run in all kinds of directions, free-flowing. And I'm often surprised by what my subconscious is up to when I see it on the page. It'll take me a while to get all of that out. With the first book, I wrote 400 pages single spaced.. using a font sized 12, Times Roman.

When I went back to the raw fabric to pull the book together, I cut a ton of that, about half of that ended up in the book.

This time it's taking me longer to write the rough draft, since w/ Wesley the Owl, I wrote the first draft in a passionate whirlwind after he died. It's how I processed my grief. This book is being written under a lot less duress, although my passion for my subject is keen.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, please be patient. I may not be the blogger I used to be during this time of writing, because my writing energy will be channeled into the new book.

Today has been intense because my hamster, Maizie, had major surgery to remove a huge cancerous mass that was wrapped around her femur, and she had to have that taken out, plus reconstruction of her muscles around the femur they could save, and they had to amputate the rest of her leg. She was otherwise just fine and healthy, so it was worth it to take this out and let her go on living her life. She clearly has a very strong will to live and wasn't letting the cancer get in her way. But it was becoming very painful and slowing her down. Now she's in recovery and on very strong pain medications. The vet, my hero, Dr. Coward, is taking her home for the night so he can keep monitoring her. This guy is really amazing. He gets so involved with his patients - even a tiny gray hamster like my little Maizie, who I adore.

So I'm going to be worrying about her - I can't help it.

Well, I'll try to blog more often now, and again, sorry for the long absence! I hope you all had a great summer!

-Stacey

WHOOOOSH!! RE-Entry Shock!

2010-07-12T07:15:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone! I apologize profusely for being absent for so long. Things have been crazy to say the least!

I have been with you in spirit, however.

I got back from Colorado the day before I did my event in Palos Verdes, which went amazingly well. Then I was re-united with my dog, Fiona, who, believe it or not, had grown visibly while I was gone. These dogs grow slowly over a 2 year period and it never fails to surprise me after I’ve been away for awhile. This was the longest I had ever been away from her. Two months!

The Colorado working “vacation” was not really a vacation, but it was a lovely change of pace. Being up in the forest where it’s so quiet that we would go to the window to see who was passing when we heard the footsteps of people walking on the road below, was so restful. I always do so much better, healthwise, when I’m at a high altitude (in this case, 9,000 ft), and when I’m surrounded by wildlife.

This was a writing vacation, and I got a lot done. Also, it was a series of meetings with my attorney, and we squared away the Barn Owl Alliance paperwork for the 501(c)3. There was a lot to do besides that but I won’t bore you with the details.

After I did the event in Palos Verdes (where I met a few of you blog readers and alliance members!), I returned home and immediately left again with my dog so I could fumigate the house. The hamsters are at a babysitter’s, so it was the first time in years that I had a chance to fumigate, which needed to be done because the hammsters’ food sometimes contains seed moths, which are very tiny moths that become real pests in time.

The key to avoiding seed moths is to freeze the food for at least 24 hours before opening it. I usually buy my hamster food at a place that does this for the customer in advance, but I made the mistake of buying hamster food at one of the big chains a couple of times and was suddenly inundated w/ little moths. Ugh. The situation was beyond the point where I could just catch and release them, which would have been my preference.

So, Fiona and I stayed away for a few days after that.

Finally, however, I returned home.

Every time I return from the mountains – any mountains – I get what I call “re-entry shock”. I crash. My body has to adjust again to the high air pressure of sea level (at high altitudes, I do so much better. There seems to be less pressure on my brain and I have a lot less symptoms, hence the migraines are much fewer and lower in intensity)> When I get back the migraines hit like they’ve been waiting for their revenge and I’m just laid out for weeks with one migraine after another.

The heat also doesn’t help. When it’s hot, ones’ blood vessels dialate, which also contributes to my migraines. I’m just not made for hot weather, and the Colorado mountains are nice and cool in the summer and even cooler in the winter. I literally have gotten out of the car in 40 degree weather, wearing a tank top and shorts, and rolled in a snow bank to cool off. It’s ridiculous!

Other people are wearing coats and hats and I’m still in summer clothes. So coming back to the heat of S. California is just a shock to the system.

Add to all this the smog, traffic, the crush of people, and the complete lack of anything even resembling nature, and the picture is complete.

Hence, I’ve been sick ever since I got back, mostly sleeping right under the direct flow of the air conditioning.

Also, getting online around here is also difficult – I definitely need to get wireless.

All this to say, I have not been online for a couple of weeks, and I do apologize for my absence!

This does NOT mean that I’ve become any less passionate about the Barn Owl Alliance or the blog or anything else, though!

I’ve got a few projects going on that are also going to take some of my time, but the barn owl alliance goes forward. I’m hoping that all the data that you lovely people have been amassing is complete enough for me to start acting on it.

I think the next step is to take that data and have a sit-down meeting with Nancy Conney and perhaps Tom Stephan and try to come up with the ideal parameters for an owl box with a branching system. Tom has experimented with a branching system that worked (the one on Owlivia and Owliver’s box), and a few other people have also devised systems. Perhaps there can be some flexibility if the regulations are written correctly.

I would like to not only come up with a list of parameters w/ Nancy and Tom but would also like to work with Nancy to contact the right regulators and begin discussions with them. The data that we’ve collected will help in making our case.

Please be patient with me on this! I have a lot going on and have to pace myself in all these other projects as well as this one, but I am persistent, if nothing else! Doggedly so!

I’ve hired an assistant who is really a publicist - Keith Malone. He is a long time dear friend. We’ve been friends since the 4th grade and have done many projects together from lab experiments to being on the school newspaper together to being in the International and the Spanish clubs in school to going to the same college even! We’ve even done some writing together.

You might notice that sometimes Keith will put updates on the Wesley the Owl facebook or twitter, or that he’ll occasionally speak for me. That’s fine. He’s on the board for the Barn Owl Alliance and I trust him implicitly!

Because of Keith, the Wesley the Owl facebook page is now active again and you can refer to it for updates about my schedule. The website is not up to date with schedules because Wendy still has charge of that and she’s so busy with her new book and the deadlines involved that Keith is going to be taking that over eventually. But all in good time.

I wanted to let you know that I’ll be speaking and signing books in San Diego on Thursday, July 15. It’s not my usual talk about my life w/ Wesley, however, because it’s for a group of editors. The talk will be more about the editing process, the assembling of a team,, the importance of good editing, and even some of the nuts and bolts techniques I used in editing my book.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on editing and also a workshop on book and chapter structure in September at the Southern California Writers’ Conference in Newport Beach. Obviously, this is tailored for writers who are serious about getting published and would not be of interest to most of my readers, but I thought I’d just mention it. I may also be doing an Audubon event in September in Los Angeles, but it’s not confirmed yet.

Anyway, that’s the update. I just wanted to let you know I haven’t disappeared from your lives or lost interest in the least! I’ve just been busy, overwhelmed w/ projects, and then sick for awhile as I adjusted to the hot, crowded, California environment. Sigh. I guess we can’t live in paradise all the time, right? California is pretty darn good, actually, so I’m not complaining!

Thanks for your concern and patience!

Sincerely,
Stacey O’Brien

PS: The book was recently translated into Hungarian! Wow! I’m amazed at the exotic languages into which it’s been translated. So far we have
English – American
English – Great Britain (the British Isles, Australia, NZ. Canada)
Chinese mainland – both Mandarin and Cantonese
Taiwan
Korean
Italian
German
Portuguese (Brazil)
Polish
And now Hungarian!

It’s also available in large print and as a book on CD.

The German version was recently featured in the German Readers’ Digest and published as a Readers’ Digest Condensed book and was featured in their biggest womens’ magazine.

In Italy, there was a beautiful article in their national newpaper’s weekly magazine w/ gorgeous color pictures.

And in Brazil it was featured in the national newspaper, O Globo. O Globo is also my publisher in Brazil.

I happen to speak Brazilian Portuguese (although it’s very rusty) because the first child I ever sponsored through Compassion International was from Brazil. I wanted to be able to really communicate with her, so I learned Brazilian Portuguese and got permission to call the school and center to talk to her! I’d call and they’d run up the road to get her and we’d talk for hours sometimes. The first time we talked, they didn’t know to hang up the phone after the conversation and just dropped it where it was. The connection stayed alive for hours but thankfully I wasn’t charged for all that time! The ability to speak with her directly was so important as she grew into a young woman and had no one to advise her about certain things. It was a joy to know her through knowing her language!

One of the things that the book supports is sponsorship of kids caught in the deep cycle of poverty. Sponsorship pays for their schooling, medical care, nutrition, parenting programs for their parents, practical lessons on hygienic practices such as boiling the water before drinking it, also drilling wells for clean water, dental, vocational training, and for those who show promise, college education. There is also a psychological/spiritual component that has to do with overcoming the hopeless self image that’s propogated by the society in which the kids live, which tells them that they are worthless and just trash. This is not true, and they are told that each and every one of them is precious and worthy and full of potential and possibility. They aren’t used to hearing these things in the slums where they live.

Obviously I’m passionate about sponsoring kids! I’ve checked out this organization thoroughly and know that the money is going where it’s supposed to be going! I’ve seen so many kids transformed over the years that it keeps me going, keeps me humble, and keeps me from thinking I’ve got it so bad w/ the migraines and such. When a person is in the kind of wretched poverty that these kids have endured, there is no medical care for anyone in their community. I feel lucky that I have access to doctors, etc.

I know I’m rambling a bit, but for me, having the book contribute to these kids as well as to other groups such as Saint Jude Hospital and wildlife organizations gives me a much bigger vision for why I want to continue to keep the book going. It’s not just about me, it’s about what kind of legacy of hope I can contribute to through the book. THAT is something I can get excited about!

And now the Barn Owl Alliance, too! It’s all so inspiring!

Thank you all so much for being a part of this and, again, for your patience!

What I’m reading:

Born to Bark by Stanley Coren – it’s not out yet but will be soon. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

The Bear Went Over the Mountain by William Kotswinkle: A silly spoof, in the tradition of Being There, about the world of publishing.

Hi! I'm fine! Just kinda swamped!

2010-06-25T02:33:00.001-07:00

I do VERY MUCH apologize for being so unavailable in this last week or so! I'm fine. I've been overtired and sleeping a lot, plus working w/ Cait and I'm trying to work on the sequel to Wesley the Owl...I often come to Colorado to write, so I do get swept up. I sure didn't mean to worry you! And please know that I'm very serious about and committed to the BOA and hope my writing can help the cause, too.

I will be back in LA on the 27th, speaking at Border Books in Palos Verdes and signinig books! I'm really lookoing forward to that. I'll also be reunited w/ my dog, Fiona, on the same day. It will be a great day!

I hope some of you can make it! It should be announced on the Wesley the Owl facebook site. My new publicist, Keith, is helping me get the word out about some things, like this event on June 27 at 2:00 at the Borders in palos verdes.

I hope you're all doing well! Hang in there and don't lose faith!

Love,
Stacey

A Quote I Grew Up With Still Applies

2010-06-13T01:27:00.000-07:00

I grew up with extraordinary parents. My mom was always singing, quoting shakespeare at opportune moments, and majored in music in College w/ a minor in English literature. She taught English in a High School in the San Fernando Valley until she had us kids, and was very education oriented. My parents moved to La Crescenta, where I grew up, BECAUSE OF the schools. And my mom didn't take anyone's word for it. She sat in on classes in both the private and public schools there to make sure.

My Dad was also a music major and psychology major, but he took so much biology he may as well also have been a bio major. He knew more about snakes than anyone I knew because he used to hang out in the herpetology section of the zoo and be mentored there. He had a full scholarship to USC in French Horn and was an alternate to the Gymnastic olympic team in I don't know what year. But he didn't take the french horn scholarship and instead went to the same school my mom went to and there you have it.

Anyway, they were both so bookish (but not nerdy) that almost every wall of our house was lined w/ books. When I went to people's houses where there were no books lining the walls, I assumed there was a room I didn't know about that served as "the library" in the house. haha!

All that to say, my mom used to hang up quotes all over the house. Still does. There was one big sign that was over her desk, on the refrigerator, over our desks, everywhere. It really sums up what her philosophy is, and although it's perhaps oversimplified, it certainly is true in most cases!

I want to share it with you:

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. -Calvin Coolidge

Here's another one of Calvin's famous quotes:
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.
Calvin Coolidge

And finally:
I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can't be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.
Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)

All of these truths are worth meditating on, because there is more truth in them than many people care to admit. These principles were drummed through our heads and I passionately believe them to be true. Ok, "Press on" does not solve ALL the problems of the human race, but it does solve an awful lot of our problems in life, and it sure beats not pressing on!

And relying on things like "genius", "talent", "education" are not enough in life. They can be cop-outs, to be honest. How many blow-hards have you met in your life who prance around declaring their own genius, talent, or education? Are they helping anything? No. How many humble people have you met who are quietly changing things - ok I'll bring out my own hero's name - Jane Goodall. She was just pure persistence at the beginning. She only had a high school education when she made the majority of her biggest discoveries, did you know that? Then she went back and rushed through a PhD based on her discoveries. But it was her sheer persistence that got her where she was in the first place!

I hope that inspires you. It inspires me!

-Stacey

PS: It's never too late to follow your "bliss" in the sense of moving ahead on what you've always wanted to do. There are seasons of life where you can't do everything, In fact, you can never do "everything". But you can start to move forward on the thing that inspires and excites you the most. The thing you've always wanted to do. Even if you have to go so slow that only you can tell that there's ever any progress. You just need persistence, not all that other stuff. It's kind of a relief to realize that.

PS: Here are some links about amazing animals and their intelligence, cuteness, etc.

2010-06-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

Check out these links:

Blind dog has own seeing eye dog:

http://www.pawnation.com/2010/06/11/blind-dog-has-her-own-seeing-eye-dog/

Ragdoll cats and kittens napping (they are all Wendy's!):

http://www.crackonoonragdolls.com/crackonoonragdollsnapping.html

And a final cute picture of puppies:

-Stacey
My text is copyrighted, but otherwise the pictures are copyrighted by the websites they came from. The images are from Blurbia.com (which contains images that are not as innocent and sweet as these animal images, which is why I did not provide the link)

Owl Boxes and Branching

2010-06-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a new owlbox to watch. I have not been aware of it. I'm sorry I'm not on top of everything...there's so much to do and I'm in Colorado writing w/ Cait and setting up the 501(c)3 for the Barn Owl Alliance, etc. I have not been spending a lot of time on the internet.

Here's the comment from one of the blog readers, and then I'll talk about the Hungry Owl Project:

brdlvr said...
Stacey,
Thanks for referring folks to the Owlivia web cam site, but for some reason it seems you aren't aware of an owl box of one of the BOA members, Lisabegood with Buddy and Fluffy. With the guidance of EagleEye, she has provided a wonderful branching system for the owlets, 5 in all, and there is much action going on there. All 5 come out and use the system, -all of it. Please tune in around 8:30 PT and see for yourself.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-buddy-and-fluffy-barn-owl-show

Lisa is attempting to get some video of the branching owlerts for the alliance, but has run into some technical difficulties. Besides attempting to get video, this owl family has been totally undisturbed by humans. What a refreshing thing to see. It is a testament to Lisa and an overpowering example of how important branching is for the successful fledging of owlets. As we have learned, many raptor species, if not all, do not just fledge out of the nest, but need a branching system to assist them during this process. Of course, I don't have to tell you this.

Big smile goes here.

-------------------

Also in the comments was a letter from the Hungry Owl Project. When I said, "What is HOP", I had no idea it meant Hungry Owl Project. I know of it as hungryowl.org and didn't remember that the word "Project" was at the end. Plus, there are SO MANY acronyms on the internet that I just didn't know they referred to themselves or were referred to by others as HOP.

Sigh.

Now it seems I have managed to insult the very good people who I met last year in Marin County. I was very enthusiastic about what they were trying to do, and have even included them in my talks about Barn Owls and how they are the "farmers' best friend" and how Hungry Owl was trying to eliminate the use of rodent poisons, and was encouraging people in the SF area to install Barn Owl boxes instead, where there were already rodent infestations, and to not use rodent poisons.

Their goals are similar to ours in that we also want to eliminate the use of rodent poisons!

I'm surprised to find that people from the Alliance have gotten into a fuss with them. One of their members is ALSO A MEMBER OF THE BARN OWL ALLIANCE AND ASKED US FOR IDEAS ABOUT BOX DESIGN!

We need to be very careful before we criticize anyone because that puts them on the defense, when they are possibly quite well meaning and on the same side as we are. If they're not, we'll be much more effective with honey than with vinegar - I'm sure you've heard that expression - you'll attract more bees w/ honey than with vinegar.

The realization that owlets need branching systems was something that dawned on me slowly as I watched the Molly box and started thinking, "Hey wait a sec - what are they going to do when they branch?".

I don't expect everyone who does owlboxes to realize this. In fact, that's why we created the Barn Owl Alliance - to figure out how to educate people who've been doing this a long time about the need for branching. This is not going to be easy, because most of the people doing owlboxes have the very best intentions and really do think that the owls can "work it out themselves".

The problem is that the lack of branching is not normal for them so they did not evolve to live in places without branches or a bark covered place to climb back up if they fall. This is hard news to take if you've been doing owl boxes for years. When owlets disappear from a box, they do so rather quickly because of predation.

Add to that the fact that, occasionally, some barn owls do not branch but fly right out. It's rare, though. Also, some barn owls fall and do survive for a day on the ground, and then find a way back up. That, also, is not the norm.

Since only 1 out of 15 barn owls lives through the first year, and since there are so many forces already killing them - MANMADE forces, NOT NATURAL forces such as cars, electrical wires, pet dogs, gunshot wounds, environmental poisons, rodent poisons... we want to help the ones in owlboxes to survive.

Also of concern is the sheer number of owlboxes out there on farms and in suburbs that are luring barn owl pairs there to nest, then the babies do not survive the fledging because of the lack of branching systems.

There is no denying this. Wildlife rehabbers take in a lot of fallen owlets w/ resulting injuries.

Yes there are ignorant people who pick up fledging birds from the ground and take them to wildlife centers. Don't do that.

In fact, in my book, I explain exactly what to do if you find a supposedly abandoned bird of fledgling age or younger. You do not disturb the bird but hide and watch for more than an hour to see if any parents are about. IF the parents are around, they will feed the baby bird on the ground. If it's a helpless baby bird, look for the nest, if you find the nest, put it back in. Birds don't have a sense of smell so that's a myth that they will smell the human on the baby and reject it! Not so!

If the parents are around and the nest is destroyed and there are baby birds, you can put them in a box or basket and literally install the nest in the tree (nail it or whatever, into the tree, before replacing the babies). The parents will then continue to care for the babies in the box or new nest.

Only when there are no parents about do you call a wildlife rehab center.

Now, this advice applies to other birds besides owls. If you see an owl on the ground who can't get back up into its nest, either guard him against predators until he finds a way back up, or call someone w/ experience who can put him back up. If he's injured, take him to a wildlife center.

But it is NOT NORMAL for Barn Owls to be sitting on the ground, ever. They DO NOT FLEDGE TO THE GROUND like other kinds of birds and they are INCREDIBLY vulnerable there. They don't hide in the underbrush, they don't have the instincts of a fledging bird. They are BRANCHING BIRDS.

For the sake of the Hungry Owl Project, I'll explain.

Barn Owls leave the nest about 2 weeks before they're fully functional at flying. In fact, they cannot fly at all. They can hop-flap from one branch to another. They can't get back into the box, sometimes, unless there's a branch or perch directly in front of the entrance to the box. They need branches about 2 feet away from each other, in front of the entrance, to fly-hop to and from as they learn to use their wings. They also hold on to the perch and flap their wings hard to build up the wings and the chest muscles. Then they start a pouncing behavior that also helps them learn to coordinate their body and wings.

As they fly-hop, they learn what works and what doesn't for their wings. They even watch the way their siblings use their wings to see what works and what doesn't. They LEARN to use the wings in different ways to stop, to gain altitude, to go forward, to hover and land, to do a landing pounce vs. a hovering land.

Sometimes they slip off the branches and fall to the ground. Even though they are flapping their wings like mad, they haven't learned HOW to flap them so that they catch the air and give them altitude, so they fall to the ground.

Once there, they cannot fly back up. So there must be a nearby piece of wood covered in something nonslippery like astroturf (that doesn't slip) for them to climb back up to the branching system.

All a branching system is is an imitation of what an owlet encounters when he/she comes out of a hollow tree. There is rough bark to hook their talons into, and they can climb that tree trunk by hooking their talons in and flapping their wings and literallyl climbing up. This must be imitated in the case of owl boxes.

They also have sturdy branches available to them in a hollow tree, and they hop-flap from branch to branch for about 2 weeks, slowly learning to fly.

They are so unlike other kinds of birds in this way. Eagles, for example, are pushed out of the nest and voila' they can fly. Not so w/ owls.

I apologize if anyone from the Barn Owl Alliance was insulting to Hungry Owl. I really enjoyed meeting you folks when I was up there, and am appalled if you feel attacked by anyone in our group.

Our only aim is to educate barn owl box builders about the need for branching systems. If you already have branching systems installed, then GREAT!

Also, I think we're really better off just working with Wildlilfe officials to incorporate this well documented barn owl behavior into regulations that must be incorporated into ALL barn owl boxes in the United States. After all, these requirements are already in place and regulated in captive situations for barn owls (branching systems and a climb up log, etc.).

If we just incorporate the knowledge and understanding gained by Barn Owl Biologists into the existing regulatory code, then everyone will be notified about it and will know about it and will know what to build and how, because that will be in the regulatory code.

I'm starting to think that hassling everyone who builds boxes is NOT the way to do this! It just puts them on the defensive and makes them think that the entire alliance is against them. Also, if your'e a member, it's ok to educate, but please don't harrass people in the name of the barn owl alliance.

People WILL add branching systems once they are convinced for themselves that this is a real behavioral need for barn owls. It takes time. It is pointless to accuse people, because most people don't know about branching behavior in barn owls!

This is a slow lesson for just about everyone. And it's hard to take if you've been doing this for years!

I think we ought to continue to try to obtain more video, and possibly find a contact in England who would be willing to help us, to share with us their process as they made their laws requiring branching systems for barn owl boxes. England has already been through this entire battle, so we should learn from them and not try to reinvent the wheel!

So, if you want to help, please try to find someone in England who's part of the Barn Owl Trust in England or who knows how to go about this and can sort of mentor us. THAT would be a huge help!

Sorry this is so long!
And I do apologize to the Hungry Owl Project on behalf of the Barn Owl Alliance if anyone was disrespectful of your intent and your integrity. I know you to be wonderful, sincere, great people who are trying to help the owls AND to stop the use of rodent poisons. In that, we are on the same page!

Let's not divide, let's try to unite! (yes, I know this is very hard to do. I've been through this also, as you all have seen. This is a difficult path, but a worthy path).

Love and peace to all,
Stacey O'Brien

Thanks for all the advice!

2010-06-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm just trying to figure out how to untag everything and get it back to normal - I did write to CafePress immediately and told them what my situation was and asked them to remove all crosstagging. Wendy is just super super stressed, trying to meet the deadlines on her book, that's all, and the media she has of mine is no longer immediately accessible to her because the computer that had it crashed irrevocably - a sort of perfect storm of problems.

Thanks for your ideas!

What is HOP?

I hear that people are going onto boxes and agitating or causing trouble. That could mean any number of things. After all, I've been accused of being "disruptive" and ever, apparently, of threatening to sue. So...what does that mean?

But I will honor the request to tell "my people" (by the way, each person is an individual. I don't control people, nor do I control what they do with the information they have, their new knowledge, their passion. So everything everyone does should not be attributed to me! I'm just one lowly person who cares passionately about barn owls, but I am NOT instructing anyone to go to owl boxes and cause any kind of trouble!). not to cause trouble.

Please don't go on owl boxes and "cause trouble" or have arguments that seem argumentative. Now, that's an almost impossible thing to define in this day and age of chatrooms that serve more as cultish cliques, full of flamers, than actual discussion groups, so the words "seem argumentative" mean different things to different people.

So, if you come across an owlbox that does not have a branching system, it's best to just start out by saying that the owlets don't fledge, but that they branch. So, for a good outcome, the box owner needs to put up something for the owlets to land on, right in front of the door, then another one about 2 feet from the door, then another one about 3 feet from the door, all at the same height, more or less. Be humble enough to say that a lot of us are just finding out about this and it's not the fault of the box owner or box builder that they didn't know this. A lot of people don't know this (which is why there are so many owl boxes in America without branching systems, and which is why we have so much work to do).

Also, you could explain that they also need a way to get back up if they fall to the ground. You could refer them to one or two of the links that we've got that show barn owls who are unable to get back in to their boxes. You could explain how they climb out onto branches and then hop-fly from branch to branch for about 2 weeks to strengthen their wings and learn how their wings work. You could even talk about how they watch each other and learn moves from each other. And how occasionally one will miscalculate and end up on the ground, which is not normal for an owl. They don't fledge to the ground like songbirds, so an owl on the ground is a good target for a predator.

If people want to enjoy watching the owlets succeed, it's a real thrill to watch the process of branching. So if one falls to the ground, there needs to be a way to get back up. A ladder leg covered w/ astroturf is a perfect way, and easy.

It doesn't have to be a difficult thing to put up a branching system after the babies are already in the nest. Carlos did it and so did the Owlivia people. You could refer the to look at the branching system on the Molly the Owl box or on the Owlivia and Owliver box.

The main thing is to explain the behavior and let them decide to do something about it. You could point out that everyone involved wants to see the owlets thrive, and that this is the best way to do that.

It's best to emphasize the fact that we ALL want to see the owlets survive and thrive.

That's what I did for weeks and weeks. Yes, I got banned, but it did get people thinking, and it WAS true that they didn't want the "story" to end tragically either, and they DID built branching systems, and we DID get to watch the delightful process of the babies learning to fly and succeeding.

You could say that, too.

Try not to get sucked in with people who are deliberately trying to trap you into an argument. This is EASIER SAID THAN DONE because there are people who are clever at this sort of thing, and before you know it, you're defending yourself and then people say you sound "paranoid" or whatever, or you're a "worry wart" or a "rabble rouser" or "disruptive".

You've watched this happen to me. You've seen me blunder right into traps, unknowingly.

I've never dealt w/ chat rooms before, but I'm finding them to contain some of the worst of human nature! It's really a shock, because I'm so used to dealing with honest, straightforward, good people that I just think people really do have good intentions, and I blunder right into the trap. But I'm learning! As we all are!

I don't know what these complaints are about "People from the barn owl alliance", so I'm just dispensing general advice based on what I know at this time and have learned at this time. We are ALL on a road of learning and growing, so none of us knows the perfect way to approach each and every anonymous person on the net. Also, there are people who will accuse you, and then when you defend yourself, YOU are accused of being disruptive. Sigh.

so it's complicated.

All I can say is, try to be diplomatic and don't assume that everyone is deliberately obtuse. Sometimes it just takes a good explanation for people to figure out what to do. It's worth taking the time to explain what branching is and why it's needed.

Just do your best, that's all any of us can do. We all make mistakes, we all blunder into situations, none of us is perfect. And when you're the one trying to educate or suggest changes, people find it easy to make you a target for some reason. So just be careful.

In the good news department! I've finished my meetings w/ my lawyer and the 501(c)3 is well on its way, as we are filing the paperwork now. There's a process that takes some time, but our part is done! The Stacey O'Brien American Barn Owl Alliance is a reality!

As for the website, it turns out I'm going to have to find a way to get all my pages from Wendy and rehost them somewhere else. This is a blow. I am no expert at this and will have to learn FAST how to do this. Once I've done that, I've got to learn how to make the Barn Owl Alliance website because Wendy has withdrawn her offer to help. Like I said, she's just too swamped with her own book. It gets VERY INTENSE as you near the deadline for a book. I had no idea how intense it was, nor how many steps and rechecks and changes and just tons of things you have to do before the deadline, all under some level of stress. So she's just not able to do what she had hoped to be able to do.

So I'll have to figure it out. I have a month to get all this worked out.

I'll probably just have to hire someone to do this. But never fear! We will have BOTH websites up and linked together as soon as I can possibly do it!

Then, when you're trying to discuss this with people, you'll be able to refer them to the website for examples of branching and explanations, pictures, video links, etc.

Things are on their way to getting BETTER!

Just keep up the good work and the educating and research and we'll have a place to put it all pretty soon, for the public to learn from!

Everyone hang in there! Let's not get discouraged. After all, this is about those beautiful, innocent souls we've all come to love - the baby barn owls themselves!

-Stacey

An example of an owlet trying to get back into a box

2010-06-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

This has a narrative that oversimplifies the situation. I don't know if there is a tree nearby, or whata the exact situation is. I do know that if an owlet is strong enough, he/she can climb up the pole and not encounter a "ceiling", ie, he can continue up to the top because the pole is not in the middle of the box floor.

However, this is unusual in that most of the owlets somehow learned to fly without an obvious branching system. We've seen other videos where none of the babies were able to get back inside because they could not hover and aim for the doorway. Instead they fell all the way to the ground - and this box was in a tree, but did not have a branch in front of the door. So all the owlets were stuck outside overnight, and when the parents tried to feed them, they inadvertantly knocked the owlets right off the branches, or the food fell to the ground - it was a very sad video.

In this video, the owlet falls to the ground and makes many attempts to get to the top of the box. There is no comment about whether or not he is able to get back into the box for the day. I doubt it. He also missed quite a few meals that were brought to the other owlets on top of the box.

So this is an incomplete story, but the footage is good for the barn owl alliance, and it's good for showing what some owlets do go through. This is a particularly strong group of babies, however, in that they probably fledged late, had plenty of food (obviously if 7 babies were thriving, they had a lot of food available), an were very strong at the outset. This is not always the case, as we've seen with little Wesley at a certain owl box - he was developmentally slow and took longer than usual to catch up to his siblings.

Anyway, here is the video. Take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7-_Ap0qcj8&feature=player_embedded

-Stacey

PS: I need help with something. I have a little store, one that I don't advertise, but if you're on my website you see a button that says, "CP Store", and that's a Cafe Press store. A while back, I noticed that my store had been illegally overrun with Molly the Owl products. When you went to the Wesley the Owl store, you saw Molly t-shirts, Molly everything, with the Wesley items confusingly scattered amongst the Molly things I was very upset, of course, but I didn't turn anyone in (I should have gone straight to the complaint department but I didn't).

What to do? So, I thought, Ok, I"ll tag my stuff with HIS product names like "Molly the Owl" and so on. So now BOTH our stores were polluted w/ each other's stuff. I should have known he was laying another trap. He then removed his stuff from my store and turned ME in for tagging my stuff so it ended up in his store.

Sigh.

Ok, so I went in to take the tags off and put everything back the way it was BUT...the only way to do that is to go to your media basket (where you keep the images used on your products), go to "View", go to "Tags", and undo your tags.

Well GUESS WHAT? ALL MY MEDIA WAS GONE and my basket was empty, so I could not go in and remove the tags!

I wrote to Cafe Press about it and haven't received a response yet.

This is insanity. Of course, they can prove w/ their archives that he contaminated my store first. I just got tired of the constant attacks. I mean, enough already! But instead of getting him in trouble and turning him in, I did it back to him so he'd know how it felt. Not knowing he was probably deliberately entrapping me. For all my media to be gone is insane.

Does anyone know how to remove tags without going through the media basket?

To complicate this matter, Wendy has full control of ALL MY MEDIA! She has all my physical pictures and all digital copies, and is unable to help me with this kind of stuff, now that she has her own book. Yet I also can't get my media from her to restore it. I'm really in a tough spot.

So I'm asking if any of you know how to undo tags on Cafe Press without having to have the original media in the media basket.

Thanks in advance for any advice!
I hope all this attacking and misrepresenting will stop. It makes no sense. It's time to move on for heaven's sake! How can any one person be so jealous and focused on another person who they've never even met? Oh well, I'm not a psychologist.

To That Which you Tame, You Owe Your Life

2010-06-09T10:30:00.001-07:00

What does this mean to me now? Now that Wesley has gone, it still resonates with me because by knowing Wesley so intimately, I gained knowledge that does not absolve me from action. I know how emotional owls are, and how vulnerable, and how smart and intuitive and precious they really are. So, if I see barn owls in danger - ANY barn owls, I must act. Because by giving me his love and the deep knowledge of the soul of the barn owl, he has made me responsible not just for him, but for all his wild cousins. My knowledge, now, is my burden - but this burden is a joyful one - and I must speak for these creatures. I must try to help them when I see them in trouble, because perhaps others might not have had the privilege of knowing their soul, or even their behavior and needs. So I have to speak out when I see their needs being ignored and when I see them being exploited for man's benefit, but to their own tragic demise.

This is why I'm so passionate about the Barn Owl Alliance. I must be their voice as much as possible, and now many have joined me by falling in love with the owls they're coming to understand, too. Through the miracle of webcams and streaming, many people have watched the intimate lives and the emotional lives of Barn Owls, and have realized that each individual barn owl is precious, has his/her own personality and quirks, and is deeply loveable and passionate and affectionate and even caring of each other. Many of us have now been touched by the indelible spirit of the Barn Owl, and we are now all burdened with our understanding, to help them.

This is what drives me, makes me passionate, keeps me going. This is what the Barn Owl Alliance is - a group of people who have come to understand these precious creatures with whom we share this earth, and who have come to care deeply for the welfare of these individuals, and who are willing to speak for them and help them overcome the obstacles that mankind has unknowningly put in their way.

Education is the key. Once we understand a creature, and come to love it, then we can learn how to help it.

By the way, we need a word in the English language for a nongendered being, whether human or animal. We are reduced to having to say he/she, him/her, his/her when we are talking about non gender specific people or animals. I HATE saying "it" when referring to any animal. An animal is not an "it". An animal is an individual with feelings, emotions, drama, concerns, passion - an animal is him/her, he/she, ....

I'm amazed that we have never come up with a word for this. We try to get around it by saying "their", "them", but it doesn't work gramatically.

Perhaps when the Barn Owl Alliance has made the entire world safe for Barn Owls and educated the very last person, and has eliminated rodent poisons, and has established branching systems for all owl boxes, we can figure out a word for the English Language and lobby for its inclusion in our lexicon. But until then, we have much work to do.

-Stacey

PS: Last night I heard a northern pygmy owl. Wow! This morning I woke up to the familiar crunching footsteps of deer and the sound of them munching on the delicate spring greens below my window. I got up and watched them from out on the balcony. One of the deer looked up at me, right into my eyes, and held my gaze. She had such wild eyes that I was startled. Gentle, but totally those of a wild creature. They did not run, but continued to nibble their way through the forest.

If Cait wants to see if I'm awake in the night (we're both notorious insomniacs sometimes), she hoots out her window, which is one floor below mine. If I leap out of bed and rush to my window to hoot back, she laughs and says, "I thought you might be awake." I guess she knows me pretty well! hah.

What we can do to save other wildlife from future spills:

2010-06-06T09:05:00.001-07:00

I got this from Defenders of Wildlife and I did go to the link w/ the letter, altered it w/ some of my own comments, and hit "send". They make it very easy to lobby for change to save wildlife. If you're interested, I'm posting this email I received from Defenders of Wildlife. I am a member, obviously, and they are an organization that uses letters and pressure from members to ask lawmakers to pay attention and do the right thing in these matters:

Here's the email I got, plus info on Defenders of Wildlife:

Here is the exact link to the letter page where you send a letter to Washington to stop driling in the Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Some people have had trouble getting to it, and there are so many links in this message that I thought I'd put the exact one here for you:

https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=1797&autologin=true&s_src=3WDE10091TXXX&s_subsrc=060410email&JServSessionIdr004=b3p0g02792.app225a

If you can not read this message for any reason, you can view it
online now...
http://action.defenders.org/site/R?i=SxIuinFvx6vfmx2DZXli_w..

Dear Stacey,

Imagine the potential damage from an industrial oil field in
the midst of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - one of the
most important
onshore denning habitats for polar bears - and you'll
understand why I need
your help today.

Polar bear mothers are particularly sensitive to noise and
other disruptions. Construction, road traffic, airplanes and other
noisemaking
activities can cause these beloved wild bears to abandon their cubs,
leaving
them to die without the important lessons that only a mother bear can
teach.

Help preserve the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Tell the Fish and Wildlife Service to
protect
the Arctic Refuge - and the polar bears and other wildlife that
rely on this
pristine landscape to survive.

http://action.defenders.org/site/R?i=q1mogZrjo5AADpsGX7B7pw..

With the Fish and Wildlife Service set to revise the Arctic
Refuge's 15-year management plan, we only have until Monday
(June 7th)
to make our voices heard. We only need 800 messages from caring people
in California like you to meet our goal of 40,000 messages. Will
you help?
(note, they are talking about California because I am listed as being from California. But they need letters from people in all states).

http://action.defenders.org/site/R?i=6fq56-nkLJSjjV2GK-PuwA..

Please take action
right now! Urge the Fish and Wildlife Service's Arctic Refuge
Planning Team to protect the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge and the spectacular wildlife that live there.

http://action.defenders.org/site/R?i=O41jXNVyzchQh_xdGxW_fA..

For years, the oil industry and
its political supporters have pushed to industrialize this special
place. Just this week, one of the oil industry's
biggest supporters, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin even claimed
that the offshore oil disaster in
the Gulf proves the need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge! In fact, the Gulf oil spill proves only that drilling
is too dangerous to risk harming a pristine place like the Arctic
Refuge.

The Arctic Refuge is home to polar bears, grizzly bears, caribou,
musk oxen, Dall sheep, wolves and rare wolverines. It's also an
important area
for millions of migratory birds, many of which make their way
across California on
their way to the Arctic Refuge.

Today you have the unique opportunity to tell the Fish and
Wildlife Service how you think the Arctic Refuge should be managed for
future
generations. Please help protect the Refuge's wildlife by taking
a moment to
tell the Fish and Wildlife Service how important the Arctic Refuge is
to you.

Send your message
today

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BIG NEWS! Tom Stephan is joining us! (this is one of 2 posts today so don't miss the one below this one!)

2010-06-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

This is WONDERFUL NEWS! Here is my answer to Tom. I hope all of you will take this same attitude and let bygones be bygones, and work together with Tom to come up with a nesting and branching system that will allow all owlets to survive in the way they would in a natural hollow tree setting. I'm SO HAPPY TO HEAR from Tom and believe he is sincere! After all, he probably started this whole business of building barn owl boxes because he was interested in the owls. It has taken all of us awhile to realize the extent of the branching problem, so let's welcome Tom with open arms and be his ally!!!

Here's my response to Tom, followed by his comment/letter to us:

Tom,
This is very brave of you to come here and be willing to work with us to help change the way owlboxes are made and installed, and to work with us in making branching systems. I am THRILLED And I hope everyone will help you to find the right solutions. You have a huge influence in the greater San Diego area, and could do so much to help the owls with an improved box and branching system! I'm really, really excited to have you on board and am looking forward to working together to make a difference for the owls.

I think that for a long time no one has realized the problem, so I don't fault you for that. And I know that you have felt attacked by people in the past, which makes it even harder to say, "Ok, I want to make improvements" because you feel like you have to defend yourself first!

But we will not attack you. We will work with you for a greater outcome, and I think the result will be a triumph for the owls and for the humans alike, and that your improved design could become the prototype for owlboxes w/ branching systems worldwide, if we do this correctly!

Right now we're doing research - looking for photographic and video resources that show owls branching - unfortunately it sounds like Carlos will not let us use any of his footage, although it shows so well how owlets branch about 2-3 weeks before they can fly well, and it shows how they learn and train their wings on the branching system Carlos finally did put in place.

We're also looking into box designs all over the world.

I'm going to post this answer to you so it's not buried in the comment section.

People in the alliance, let's work closely with Tom. He is not here for us to attack him. Let's put the past behind us and move forward together to learn what the owls NEED to survive according to their natural behavior, and help Tom to set up what could become the prototype for other successful nesting and branching systems!

I'm very, very excited to have Tom on our team and wanting to work with us!

Thank you so much, Tom! Welcome!

Sincerely,
Stacey O'Brien

Here's Tom's letter to us:

Tom Stephan said...
Stacey and friends of owls,
After some careful consideration, I wish to join your goal of state and federal standards for the construction and installation of barn owl nesting boxes. These laws could be very much like the falconry regulations that I abide by everyday when housing and flying my trained raptors.

I have new fledging posts in service and am dreaming up new owlbox designs that have a catch pan "porch" under the provided perch. That I hope you will approve of. Also I try to install these boxes next to trees for shade and comfort and for later fledging when I can, but some properties new and have no trees a few have been installed in the sun. They all have fledged young that fluttered down to the ground and vertically walked/ flew (I use the term srambled) back up to the top of the fence and then into the box after 2-3 days, but there is as yet no studies to show any mortality, if there is any. So, I could provide a double roof affair for those boxes in the sun needing some insulation and a ramp affir for them to regain the porch therby regaining the perch and the the box. The newest box design is a two pole mounted "Castle" with a cleanout trap and spacious "drawbridge" doorway that is wide eneough for the entire brood. Under the door way and just below the box is an oval plywood board that I call the "moat" that would act as a catch pan for fledging owls. Please feel free to contact me if you have any thoughts on my new configurations or any part of the installation process Please anyone may contact me please at tom@airsuperiority.com or just call me at 760 445 2023 Thanks, Tom Stephan

Let's work WITH Tom for the betterment of all barn owls and let anything any of us has said be put behind us. It's the only way to move forward! I admire Tom for being so willing to do this! YAY!

Sincerely
Stacey O'Brien

June 5, 2010 3:41 AM

An adventure in the Colorado Rockies

2010-06-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

Hi All!

I'm here in the Rockies, soaking up the forest and wildlife, and sweet, clean air. Before I start telling you about this latest adventure, please read the comment attached to the post below this, the one w/ the link to the barn owl alliance. Tom has some ideas about owl box and ramp design that you ought to look at and see if you think it's good. The only comment I would make about the ramp is that you don't want it to go directly to the entrance of the box, lest predators use it for easy access to the owlets. A ramp to a nearby perch or platform from which they could fly-hop to the perch in front of the door would be best in that case.

About yesterday:
Not one day goes by here without some kind of wildlife encounter or adventure! I was sitting here by my bedroom window writing an email to Sy Montgomery, of all people, when I had a big bird adventure (Sy's new book is called Birdology). As I was emailing, I heard crows making a ruckus, then heard the sound of something crashing through the trees and a thump on the ground. I leapt out of my chair and looked out the window. The crows were now on the ground (crows? They were huge. Maybe they were ravens. I'm not sure. They were as big as small barn owls). And then I saw a large animal thrashing on the ground w/ the crows attacking it. I thought it was the mother rabbit who lives in the wood pile below my window. She has babies, so I started yelling, "Stop it! Leave her alone! Go away!"

This didn't have the effect I had wanted so I threw on some sandals and raced down the stairs and out the back door, and up the embankment toward the crows, yelling. As I did, they backed off and the animal they were attacking stood up. It was a female red tailed hawk! She was beautiful, magnificent!

She was shaken and took a second to get her bearings, then she flew away as fast as she could. Thank God her wings or back were not broken. I was worried they might have pecked her eyes so I followed her. So did the crows. I followed crows and flushed crows for about an hour, and I tromped around the forest looking very carefully for the Red Tailed Hawk and for perhaps any babies or fallen nest.

Apparently there had been no fallen babies. Cait didn't think they had a nest nearby, and she's an astute observer of nature, so she would know.

But here's the part that I've never experienced before:
As I walked through the forest, it was completely devoid of animal sounds. All the animals were aware of what had happened. As I peered closely at trees and branches, and even at the ground, I began to see the animals, lots and lots of animals, frozen in place as they had been when this all happened. I walked right up to a branch at eye level where an adolescent gray squirrel sat like a statue, not even twitching his tail or moving his eyes. He was not afraid of me, compared to a hawk or mob of crows. I stood looking at him and talking to him for awhile and then moved on. When I came back that way, he was still frozen in place.

I would have thought something was wrong with him, except that the birds were also frozen! I saw some amazing birds, all completely still. I would have stepped on one had I not been looking where I was going. They were not trying to get away from me at all! They knew the hawk or crows were the greater threat. I was impressed by how long every animal stayed frozen - long after the hawk and crows had left the area. These animals are WILD animals and are survivors.

It was almost an hour before I began to hear birdsong and see chickadees and finches moving in the trees again.

The amazing thing was that it felt like time had stopped and I was walking through some kind of museum piece, where the animals are forever preserved in position at the "waterhole" or in the "forest". The other amazing thing is that the animals had figured out that the greater threat was the hawk/crows.

Later that day, Cait and I took a walk on the roads around her house, and we heard the crows again. This time we knew that it meant there was a predator around. So we looked down the slope to where the crows were making their ruckus and we saw a large fox trotting along with a VERY ANNOYED look on his face. The crows had ruined any chance of him getting a good hunt, because they had alarmed every animal for who knows how far around that there was a predator in the area! He looked soo annoyed, like he was saying, "Scat! Get away! Shoot! Shoot shoot. There goes my dinner. Gosh darn it. Go away. Stupid crows. I hate when this happens."

Again, he wasn't concerned with us at all but continued to trot, annoyed, away.

I am continually amazed at the dramas that go on around us in the wilderness. The fox's ruined day, the hawk's trauma, the terrible fright the birds and squirrels had. Each species has their own world, their own culture, their own dramas and fears and triumphs, and they are all emotional about what happens in their day or night.

I wonder what today will bring?

This is how humans are meant to live - in the middle of all this. This is how we have lived for millions of years. The more out of touch we become with the wild ones, the more out of touch we become with ourselves, because this is the world that we share with the wild ones.

I look at the selfishness, the pure greed, the evil that spawned this oil nightmare. Some of America's most precious land is being as surely destroyed as if an enemy combatant had dropped a nuclear bomb on the area. It's the chernobyl of America. And the fact that a foreign country did this to us is even more odious. It just feels like we've been bombed by some other country. It's not THEIR land, animals, precious delicate habitats, that are being destroyed! They can go on as they please, while they ruin some of the most irreplaceable habitat on earth.

Thank God we didn't let anyone "drill, baby, drill". Remember hearing that it was "perfectly safe" and how "there were so many precautions in place that drilling would not affect the environment?" Well I give you exhibit A in the gulf of how "safe" it is. I'm so furious and so sad and helpless I can't even express it. It's the most helpless feeling.

I love the fact that there is one parish that is not waiting, not taking no for an answer. In Louisiana they have learned not to wait for help from the federal government. They've lost any sense of innocence about that. So they're dredging and creating a sandbar to block the oil from reaching their wetlands. They have t-shirts that say, "Dredge, baby, Dredge"> haha.

When you are in a habitat where wild animals are carrying out their precious lives in front of you every day, you realize that they have emotions, attachments, friends, family, love, empathy, pain, joy, playfulness, and you realize how precious they really are. If we all lived like we were made to live - in close proximity w/ nature - I think we would not be so glib about using this earth and these animals as if they were all here just for us to exploit. They are not "ours" to exploit!

A little humility would go a long way in almost every one of these cases where animals or habitats get abused by pompous, arrogant people who have no idea who they're hurting when they hurt these wild ones. We're not only hurting them, but by hurting them, we are hurting ourselves.

Maybe someday, we will collectively understand this. I hope it's not too late by then.

-Stacey

If you want to join the Barn Owl Alliance - here's the link

2010-06-04T10:58:00.001-07:00

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/BarnOwlAlliance/

Truth, Honor, and Freedom (thinking of Memorial Day)

2010-06-01T03:41:00.000-07:00

This AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL song sums up a lot of my personal way of looking at life. When I sing it, I substitute "all people" for "our people" for obvious reasons. Please send me a quick comment if you listened to the song and tell me if you like it, too. How do you feel about this post? It's different from the others....thanks.

Listen to it on this link (it's free):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_F0xey5nm4

Here are the lyrics:

Both sides the Tweed

What's the spring breathing jasmine and rose
What's the summer with all its gay train
What's the splendour of autumn to those
Who've bartered their freedom for gain.

(chorus)
Let the love of our land's sacred rights
To the love of our people succeed
Let friendship and honour unite
And flourish on both sides the Tweed.

No sweetness the senses can cheer
Which corruption and bribery bind
No brightness the sun can e'er clear
For honour's the sum of the mind.

(repeat chorus)
Let the love of our land's sacred rights
To the love of our people succeed
Let friendship and honour unite
And flourish on both sides the Tweed.

Let virtue distinguish the brave
Place riches in lowest degree
Think them poorest who can be a slave
Them richest who dare to be free.

(repeat chorus)
Let the love of our land's sacred rights
To the love of our people succeed
Let friendship and honour unite
And flourish on both sides the Tweed.

This is a beautiful ballad and was composed by Dick Gaughan. Copyright to lyrics = Dick Gaughan
The version you just listened to was recorded by Mary Black. It has also been recorded by Capercaillie. If you have never listened to Irish traditional music, you ought to give yourself the gift of at least checking it out. ;-)

Perhaps you know, or have figured out due to my name, that I am at the very least, significantly Irish. I speak some Gealic (though I've forgotten most of it), and sing some of the old songs in the old language. I was at 3 different traditional Irish sessiuns this weekend. We slept until almost time to go, took quick showers, and went straight to the sessiuns, and played Irish and Scottish traditional music through the night. I dozed off in the middle of about 20 top traditional Irish/Scottish musicians playing the best of the old music and my dreams danced like the Faerie.

Tonight (well forest is softening into light and the sweet sounds of sleepy birds awakening floats through my window, so it's really the next morning), I want to share with you the music that inspires me, moves me, informs me. This song pretty much defines my philosophy, although when I sing it, I substitute "all people" for "our people" for obvious reasons.

Tonight, many of the songs were about the wars and troubles when we were sold into slavery by the English, when our land was taken and made into farmland for England while we perished by the millions from starvation, or protest songs about Scotland being sold off to the English for gold ("they made us slaves for the sake of the gold"), and we were crammed into death ships and dumped off in Australia (being a criminal meant disagreeing w/ the English crown at that time - it's kinda like being banned, but the consequences are much worse). The Irish Famine, the divisions made between the different Celtic groups. Don't get me wrong - I have no problem w/ English people - it was their leaders at those times who did these things. And they also did them to the regular English people, too.

Like many peoples, the Celts (pronounced Kelts) have struggled to maintain their culture and integrity in the face of much opposition. I think this is true for most human beings at some point in their lives, too.
Anyway, some songs were protests, some were sad, but this one is by far my favorite because it is conciliatory and hopeful.

This bit of family history might also give you insight into why I am so against the twisting of truth and why I find it so scary when people are frightened into silence over something as mild as an anonymous chat room. It's scary. People used to give their lives to shelter a stranger - a Jew during WW2, a slave before/during the Civil War, anyone who is persecuted, during the persecution of that person's group.

To be too fearful to stand for the truth and to be a voice for those without a voice when the consequences are not death and dismemberment is astounding to me. So many people have given their lives for the freedom of others, for the truth to be allowed, for freedom of speech and thought.

This is a touching song that is sung in pretty much all Irish and Scottish music circles (which are everywhere by the way. Call your Irish pub and ask if they know of or if they have a "Traditional Music Session" and GO TO IT if you can!

Thank you to all the veterans who have freely given of their very lives for the sake of freedom and justice. We will never forget you.

-Stacey O'Brien (Steise Ni' Bhriain)

There are 3 new posts today. This one is about 2 nightjars I saw last night!

2010-05-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

OH WOWEEEE! WOW!!!

Cait, with whom I'm staying, as I do part of every year, lives in the Rocky Mountains. Last year she was walking up her substantial dirt driveway, off of the long dirt road she lives on, deep in the forest of the Rockies at 9,000 ft. and, being extremely observant (she would have made a great biologist, but then the world would have been deprived of some of the best Irish fiddling I've ever heard - and that's almost all I listen to anymore), and she noticed something "different" about a chunk of earth on the forest floor. She edged closer and saw her first nightjar - a common (but rarely seen) nighthawk. She could hardly believe her eyes, because are they WEIRD looking! They're so weird looking because they have nearly perfect camouflage.

They are sort of like the "missing link" that isn't missing, between owls and hawks. Some even seem to have a bit of a partial facial disk (to me, at least). A lot of people have never even HEARD of nightjars! They are the Poor-wills and nighthawks. They apparently either nest on the ground or just hang out there. They squint their eyes so that there is even better camo, because you see this long line due to their markings, rather than the round eye that they have. She thought this bird looked so strange it was as if he was from some other dimension, like "of the faerie" (remember, we ARE Irish after all. lol).

She was also surprised at how close he let her get to him. I think the nightjar knew he was so well camouflaged that he must have figured it was better to sit still than to flush. Then she saw him the next night in the same place, and he was a consistent visitor all summer. (I say him because I refuse to refer to an animal as an "it", and we have no gender neutral word for a being; isn't that strange that we don't?).

When first I got here, we didn't see a single insect. There had been a 2 foot snowfall the week before and the aspens weren't even starting to show leaves yet. Within a week it heated up and we started to see huge moths and Cait said, "AH, our nightjars will be back, now that there are so many moths." (see? She would have been a great biologist. So she's a great naturalist instead. We can't make EVERYTHING into a profession, right?). And sure enough, the very next day, the aspens burst forth in tiny leaves, and last night we saw not one, but TWO nightjars!

And they appeared to be hunting moths, with an irregular sort of flight pattern.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of poeple, seeeing a nightjar flitting around at night, think they are seeing large bats. But there really is such a thing as a nighthawk!

Now THAT I would like to see - a webcam on a nighthawk nest.

I don't know that much about them, other than the fact that Barn Owls are closely related to them, more so than other owls are, but I do know it's a huge privilege to even see one in the wild! It made my week/month for sure!

We've also seen a herd of elk, several small herds of deer, bunnies mating, playing, leaping, cavorting, and the black squirrel w/ the ear tufts (I forget the name) that lives in this vicinity, as well as chipmonks and ground squirrels. stellar jays, magpies, little yellow chickadees, a gray fox, and tracks of a lynx or mountain lion.

We were walking on the road when we heard a long, deep, extended growl from just out of view right beside us on the road. We talked loud and walked calmly back to the house, not to linger. There are a lot of mountain lions around here, as well as some lynx and bobcats. (and black bears). There was a bobcat lounging on Cait's pack porch next to the glass kitchen door one morning. And Wendy, who lives further north, chased a Canadian lynx off of her porch one morning! Wendy lost her entire herd of goats to a rogue mountain lion a few years back, which is what led her to develop the Colorado Mountain Dog, of which I have one... www.coloradomountaindogs.com

These dogs have a specific purpose and so she lets her dogs have one litter per year, and they're all spoken for before they're even conceived, because ranchers use them instead of poisons and traps to deter predators from killing their livestock. It works, and has for many centuries, since these dogs' main instinct is to protect the animals they live with.

I have one because I needed a dog who would be gentle and protective of my vulnerable hamsters and not try to hunt them like a terrier or herd them like a herding dog, etc. AND I have hopes of doing another owl immersion study if there is an unreleasable barn owl who needs a home and I can get the proper permits, etc. Anyway, my mountain dog is the only one not living on a ranch or among livestock. They're not high energy dogs in the sense that they're perfectly happy to lie around among their animal friends - and they must have animal friends. My dog loves to play w/ her brother for hours on end, though. She's staying w/ her brother right now, in fact.

ANYWAY, we've seen tons of wildlife just this week. Oh, and we have the joy of watching a Blue Heron rookery across a small lake where we can also see muskrats busily making their beaver-like homes in the newly melted water. So, yes, we saw the nesting Blue Herons, too.

It seems like we're in the middle of Africa or something, except the species of animals are different of course, and the trees and other fauna are different. But it seems just as adventurous in its own way.

One day Cait and I walked around the house from the back and there was a big ol' black bear standing next to the car. He ambled away with his substantial bottom bobbing from side to side. It was comical, since he was going AWAY from us and not attacking us. Lol. Our neighbor came home one night, got out of her car and started walking toward the house, only to realize that she was in between two black bears who were having a fight! Not exactly in between, but uncomfortably in the way, shall we say. These bears were so intent on their disagreement, though, that they ignored her, and eventually one chased the other into the forest and she chose that moment to run to the house and lock herself in.

It's a real adventure just living here! I love it here, needless to say! It feels like home to me.

I have yet to see a mountain lion here, other than just the tracks, but according to Jeff Guidry, who raised a captive, unreleasable mountain lion at Sarvey Wildlife Center, he could walk into her enclosure and NOT be able to see her for the life of him. He describes looking at the ground by his feet, and seeing the pebbles and dirt, and slowly the mountain lion began to appear to him. They are THAT good at hiding in plain site. No wonder the Native Americans thought they could shape shift! They have the most awesome ability to see you while you can't see them!

So if you do see them, it's usually when you're driving and they cross the road in front of you. (or you're backpacking alone in the hip deep snow, far, far back in the Sierras, long before the roads to the trails are even open, because you are young and adventurous and an experienced backpacker, but still, you have that innate stupidity that makes young people do things like this....and a mountain lion decides to track you for 3 days and you don't sleep for that entire time, unless you happen to accidentally doze off. When you get back to "civilization", by which you mean your car and then a remote mountain cabin, THEN you feel the fear. "You" meaning ME when I was in my 20s. sigh.).

We drive slowly on these mountain roads for the sake of the animals. None of this racing up a mountain road like you see in commercials! Hello, there could be someone standing on the other side of the curve! (not in the commercials, though, because those are shot on a closed track - but I think those commercials encourage people to cut loose on mountain roads - the evidence of this can be seen on our mountain road - or more accurately, several hundred feet below our road, where lie the remains of many a fatal accident in the form of the wrecked cars. Cait and Richard just lost a friend who "went over" (not his fault - he had a heart attack while driving). Sorry for rambling!

See, if this were a book, I'd have to go and cut out all the rambling! But this is a blog, so ramble I do!

Anyway, if you're a birder, you know how thrilling it is to see a night hawk hunting!

Also, Barn Owls are closely related to nighthawks. They are kind of somewhere between night hawks and the other, strigidae, owls. Barn Owls are their own special kind of owl all to themselves. That makes them even more precious and interesting to me.

-Stacey

Call for pictures and video of branching owlets

2010-05-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

On behalf of the Barn Owl Alliance, I would appreciate any information you have on sites with owl box designs or discussions of branching behavior, and most of all, pictures or video of branching owlets - better yet, video or pictures we can USE for our material as we go forth to try to change the way owl boxes are done in the United States, and educate those involved with owl boxes.

IF YOU HAVE BRANCHING OWLETS IN YOUR VICINITY, PLEASE VIDEOTAPE THEM IN THE ACT OF BRANCHING, LEARNING TO FLY, or PHOTOGRAPH THEM! An occasional flash is probably not going to hurt anything, by the way. If you're willing to let us use your footage, we will be eternally grateful, as will the possible millions of owlets who live because of the education and changes these videos can help bring about! We will credit each video and picture with your name, of course.

We are working on our nonprofit status, and once those papers are filed, we can grant you a tax deductible receipt for your "gift in kind". I'm working on this w/ my lawyer currently. In fact, I'm living in his house. (My close friend is his wife, Cait, and I spend part of each year living on their 3rd floor at 9,000 ft (the Rockies, not the 3rd floor by itself) in the Eastern Rockies, up among the trees. What a difference from the noise and light pollution of Huntington Beach!).

We would want you to be willing to license us to use the video and photos, of course.

If you can't do that, and few people do have active branching owlets near them, could you let us know about any links to sites that do have this kind of material on them? We will add those links to the "links" section of our Barn Owl Alliance website, once it's up and running.

THANK YOU! The baby owls who end up having a branching system upon which to branch and learn to fly, rather than plummeting to the ground and dying there, will be grateful, without knowing it, of course. WE will be grateful on their behalf!

Thank you all for caring,
Stacey

PS: I think even pictures of other species of owl branching can be included, since almost all species of owls do the same exact thing as Barn Owls - they move out onto branches and THEN learn to fly. In fact, Great Horned and Screech Owls and Saw Whet Owls, among others, move out onto branches when they're still balls of fluff.

When does the mother leave the nest, then? - added to

2010-05-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

This is in answer to one of the commenters, Evelyn, who noticed that in the webcam boxes she's watched, the mother has left the nest when the babies were around 2-3 weeks old. She wondered if maybe I was mistaken when I stated that in most successful nests that I and the scientists I know have studied, the mother stays with the babies until they are branching and often all the way through until they're independent, with the male continuing to feed the babies and the mother. Why is she not seeing this, then?

I will answer your statement about the owls you've watched on web-cams. First, these are all not entirely wild environments w/ cameras and possible other disturbances. Second, I have never said that it's not possible for the 2 parents to hunt.

I was not mistaken about anything I said, BUT there may be changes at work. Barn Owls are famous for their adaptability and we may be seeing this now. When I say that the mother generally tries to stay w/ the babies all the way through, I'm not speaking just for myself and my own observations, but I'm talking about the collective observations of dozens of barn owl biologists who have dedicated their entire lives to watching barn owls in the wild, not just on webcams. BUT.....

Having said that, however, i will say that I have only studied barn owls in Southern California, up near the Angeles Crest Forest and in Carlsbad and its surrounds. AND, I've been sick for several years, so I have not been out in the "field" like I was before - so perhaps during this time of so much increased urbanization of our empty spaces, a change has been taking place among the barn owls being observed. Evelyn may be on to something here.

Let's start with what I do know or what I have said: I'm aware of other studies that state that barn owl females have been known to go out hunting when the babies have gained enough fluff to stay warm on their own. However, that has not been OUR observation, in general. By that I mean that STATISTICALLY, it was more likely, according to our studies, that the female, IN SUCCESSFUL NESTS, will stay with the babies until well into branching and continue to stay with them until they are hunting on their own.

So, it's important to really parse through the intricacies of what's really being said. English is the best language for science because you can express things in terms of the exact meaning, meaning I can express to you that I'm talking about a statistical probability according to the observations of the people I've worked with and according to my own observations. I am NOT Saying it's impossible for the mother to act as we have seen on a few of these cameras.

In cases where hunting is not as good as it is in a great season, the female may be compelled to help w/ the hunting.

In general, though, she is not eager to leave her babies. The babies are more likely to thrive if the mother stays with them through branching and fledging (that is a statistical probability - so there are going to be successful nests where the mother did leave, such as Molly's nest). But, as you saw with OO nest, the nest was NOT a successful nest (by that we mean all the babies survive to adulthood and independence - ALL the babies).

I know that there are times when I have made a general educated, probability based guess when asked a question on the very fast moving chat, but I don't have time in those situations to explain the caveats, if ands and buts, that go with my "in general" statements.

Then I get misquoted and "people" say "AHA! Scientists were WRONG!".

It can be frustrating when it's not been explained well in our education system, how scientists use statistical probability to inform their "quickie" answers in cases where they're answering questions in "general".

It makes a person not want to answer any questions sometimes! Lol.

So, you're seeing one of the probabilities at work, but you're also seeing a smattering of unsuccessful nests (OO).

But here's the other factor that Evelyn may be pointing out, that needs serious consideration:

I have to wonder if, because of the continual urbanization of our neighborhoods, hunting has gotten worse and worse until now the mothers are more and more compelled to have to go out when the babies are 3 wks old.

This may be a pattern that scientists need to look into! It will be the grad students and post docs who do these studies - it's a perfect subject for someone working on their PhD - to compare data from a particular area from 20+ yrs ago compared to now, when there are less vacant lots, more rodent poisons, less hunting grounds.

Even the La Costa owls no longer nest at this wonderful nesting site I talked about in my book. Why? The nearby fields are all covered w/ cement now, made into a library (don't get me wrong, I love libraries!).

Perhaps we are seeing some behavioral changes due to changes in the environment caused by man - meaning increased urbanization!

This is fascinating to me because Barn Owls are great at adapting to subtle changes in environment, unlike most other species of owl (which is not to say that they adapt quickly to big changes, meaning they would not adapt to having no branches to hop to and suddenly take up flying straight out of the box or nest).

This ability to adapt is why you do find Barn Owls in the suburbs. We've seen some pretty incredible adaptation w/ hawks and falcons, too, with them nesting on tall buildings and hunting pigeons. Who would have predicted this?

There's a famous red tailed hawk who has made his nest on the balcony of a ritzy apartment building for many years, even starting to run into decades, I think. His name is "Pale Ale". He has raised many clutches of babies there, and it's right next to central park, so it's the perfect setup for birders/birdwatchers from all over the world to sit on a bench w/ their cameras and binaculars and watch the raising of the chicks all the way to fledging. There's always a dedicated group of birders at this bench during nesting season.

May 26, 2010 11:58 PM

NOTE! On THIS blog, I use all caps for EMPHASIS ONLY! They do NOT indicate an overexcited state, anger, or anything other than just emphasis. I get lazy and don't want to go up and italicize things. Heck, it took me a year to notice that they had a little doohhicky for italicizing on this blog. LOL.

-Stacey

Evelyn has offered some other links to other barn owl webcams in the comment section of this post, and I'll copy them here so you can all see them:

From Evelyn:
 in case you or anyone else is interested, here are some neat barn owl cams.  

http://www.free-live.org/web/cams/cam_schopfguggerli_s.php  
nicasio owls, on ustream  the 2 above are about the same age:

 http://www.beleefdelente.nl/kerkuil these owlets are about a week or 2 younger  and

http://www.starrranch.org/blog/?page_id=2  the female there is starting a second batch, 3 eggs so far
‪
the hatch dates for the schopfuggerli owlets are may 2nd 3rd, 5th, 8th  the 5th hatch was either the 9th or 10th and the 6th hatch was probably between the 12th and 14th

‪itacri said...
Eveyln, here's another you will enjoy. Tawny Owls in a real wild nest (hollowed out tree). It says 2009 on the page but it isn't, they just didn't change that from last year.  

 http://www.eoy.ee/kodukakk/kakukaamera

From Kathlene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9glyi3LA_d4&feature=related

How it works: Regulations and education

2010-05-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a little time and try to explain how changing regulations works to educate the entire wildlife community, and why this is so important:

First, let me adamantly point out that we must continue our efforts to educate our communities about owlboxes - that they are more than just a method of rodent control! These are living, sentient, emotional, ENDANGERED beings, and it's not enough for them to serve us by hunting rodents - we must serve them in return by making sure that the owlets they're working so hard to feed (while they clean up our rodent problem) survive!

I am certain that most people w/ owlboxes on their land have no idea anything is wrong. And many of these owlboxes are on very large parcels of land where the owner doesn't see the day to day operation of the owls and their behavior and needs. Nor will the owner see when the owlets fall and are dragged off by other wild animals.

So we do need to educate! And we will do that through the owl alliance and through individual efforts of likeminded people. We hope to put together both a website and a brochure that can clearly outline the issues and solutions.

So why the need to change the law and regulations?

Note that one of our commenters went to a wildlife rehab center and noticed that there were perches for the birds of prey, and that they all had astroturf on them (usually held on tightly by those plastic zip ties).

They are all like that because that's a regulation.

When wildlife centers put together a cage for a particular animal, they refer to a big notebook that has all the regulations for all the caging needs of each type of animal spelled out in great detail. The dimensions, materials used, perches, EVERYTHING.

By reading this notebook, the wildlife people are instantly educated as to the needs of the species they are working with. Even if they don't know the reasons for all the regulations, the outcome is that they do build the right setup for that species so that it will thrive.

It's instant, top-down education.

The same goes for wildlife regulators. They know what they know largely by having to read and know the regulations. They don't have to be specialists in every species out there - they just have to know the laws that they are to enforce, and they do enforce them.

So if we manage to get it put into the current willdlife code that all owl boxes must have branching systems, must be installed in shade, must have a door with the bottom at least 8-10 inches above the floor, and must have a way for the owlets to climb back up (and all of these will be defined specifically with measuremets and materials and installation requirements), then that wildlife agent suddenly knows what is needed and necessary. He or she does not have to know every intimate detail about barn owl branching or how they learn to fly. He/she just knows that this is what they need and makes sure that's what they get.

The wildlife agent does come to understand the reasoning, though, and is able to explain that to whoever owns the land upon which the box sits.

Regulations, then, DO serve to instantly educate all the people who are working closely with the animals involved, and that is passed on to the people who put up the owlboxes, and passed on to the builders of owlboxes.

It's a very effective way to spread the word and solve the problem all at the same time!

We are currently filing papers for the Barn Owl Alliance to be a 501(c)3, meaning a nonprofit organization. We're pulling together all kinds of information from all over the place, and we're working on putting up a website to contain this information and be a go to site for all things owlbox and barn owl (eventually). The wheels are turning.

And it can be done by working directly with the Dept of Fish and Game and the Dept of Fish and Wildlife. Fines for non-compliance help to fund the enforcement of these laws. For example, the fine for harrassing a nest of wild owls, or taking one for oneselfl without a permit, or shooting one, is $25,000 and minimum 6 months in jail.

This is serious stuff!

Twenty five THOUSAND dollars minimum, per offence, and a minimum of 6 months in jail!

I'm not saying this would be the fine for an improperly installed owlbox, I'm saying that under current law, this is what happens if you harrass a nest of owls or take one for yourself w/o a permit, or shoot one, or injure one. The severity of the mandatory sentence tells you how seriously the Dept of Fish and Wildlife and Dept of Fish and Game take this issue! And they learned about the importance of these things from the research done by biologists.

So we aim to fill the gap that is allowing so many owlets to perish after their parents have been lured to an inadequate box. The more of these inadequate boxes that are put up, the lower will be the survival rate of baby owls, and the more endangered they will become unless we do something to change the way owlboxes are installed and built. That is why we are doing this.

It's very exciting to be able to help change the outcome for so many, many of these beloved, smart, sassy, emotional, curious, empathetic, lovely, sincere, loyal, earnest, innocent beings with whom we share this sweet earth! It's an honor and a huge privilege to be their voice, to be protectors of their futures.

-Stacey

Successful branching and continuing to discredit 'scientists'

2010-05-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

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.

See the owlets use the branches! Branch, owlets, Branch!

2010-05-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

THANK GOD Carlos put in all three of those branches - the perch right on the box, the "branch" slightly lower but still parallel to the entrance of the box, and the platform that the owlets are using extensively, and that they must use in order to get to the top of the box (until they learn the in-air flip-turn, much like a swimmer's turn).

YAY!

And did the owlets use those branches? YOU BET THEY DID!

So..as much as it's been frustrating, all the outcry DID have the desired outcome! Carlos DID (albeit reluctantly, and to get the banned worry warts off his back) BUILD THE NEEDED BRANCHING SYSTEM! And the owlets did not fall to their injury or death.

THAT, my friends, was what I've been trying to explain these many weeks. The owlet ventures out, then hop-flies to a branch right in front of the opening of the box (or, if it's a tree, uses his talons and bats his wings, holding onto the bark, to position himself to hop-fly to a nearby branch)

In the case of owlboxes there has to be a branch within 1-2 feet of the entrance (to be conservative. Maybe 3 feet is ok, but let's be conservative), then another one - the platform, some feet from there...

And these owlets used all three, plus the top of the owlbox.

They had a fly-hop system back and forth, so they could get back in to the box, also.

As one of our commenters pointed out, it's not JUST laws that work. In this case, persuasion, pressure, education, outcry did end up working just in time for the owls.

But we still have a lot of work to do. There are a lot of owlboxes sitting out on huge farms and remote properties where there is no large international audience watching every move and putting pressure on the box owner. In fact, I suspect that the box owners themselves do not know for sure the fate of any babies raised in those boxes, because they are there for "rodent control", not intense, all night observation.

But this has been a victory and let's not overlook it! If you drink chanpagne, open a bottle for heaven't sake! If you prefer sparkline apple cider, Open a bottle, for heaven't sake! Hot chocolate? YES! Perfect!

Whatever you do for celebration - DANCE! WHOOP! HOLLER! SING! These owls were provided with a branching system and IT WORKED!

So we know that the branch in front of the box is super-important. Essential. That should be in the code put together for the wildlife people to enforce, insist upon.

A second one, and I do like these platforms, should be another 3-4 feet out, for them to be able to fly a little further. Plus, notice how there were more than one owlet on that platform at a time. Also, notice how the owlets watched each other and gathered courage from each other.

Note the absence of parents luring them out with food?

This has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with luring, or with food.

If there was bad hunting for a few nights, there was just bad hunting. Yes, perhaps the constant flashing put off the parents. I've noticed that they leave when it flashes or turn around.

I, too, have been concerned about the flashes that happen right when a baby is in a precarious position and needs his eyes like never before. OF COURSE it temporariily blinds them, just like it does with us, and messes up their night vision. They generally turn away and let their night vision come back, or if it's a baby in the doorway, they back up, back into the box.

I think this is the reason they didn't come out right away. At first, it seemed that every time a baby started to look out curiously, the flash went off. But maybe that being a little late out of the box ended up being in their favor, not that this is a technique that should be used!

But, being out of the box a little late means their wings are a little more developed and they're a little less awkward than if they had been able to come out the first time they wanted to.

Let me lay to rest this rumor that the parents have to entice the babies out. Not at ALL. These babies are very curious and are starting to explore their world. You probably noticed that within the box, during the day, the babies had become mucm more active and curious about every little thing. They'd focus on a pellet and gyrate their head, and pounce on things that they paid no attention to several weeks ago. Their brains are growing and their curiosity was taking over. They're more like kittens now than ever in their lives. And in the same way that kittens focus on something, pounce, try thing like jumping and racing and using the new strength in their bodies, owls do the same.

And let me lay another rumor to rest: Barn owl fathers never withhold food deliberately. They are the most sincere, concerned creatures on this earth, and with all earnestness, hunt as hard as they can to get as much food to those babies as they possibly can. I don't think they are even capable of withholding food from babies (unlike humans, sorry to say).

As you know, a male barn owl will foster dozens and dozens of baby owls all at once in a rehab situation where hundreds of baby barn owls are brought in due to falling injuries, many of those from owl boxes (surprise, surprise). And if you put all those babies in a great big owlbox, and put a male barn owl in the enclosure, and put a huge pile of mice somewhere in that same enclosure, he will personally feed every baby until each one is satisfied.

Does he get weary? Yes, but that does not stop him from being compelled to feed every baby. And, after they can tear up and swallow the food themselves, he still delivers it, one mouse at a time, from the big piile you provide, and he's literally their foster parent!

When it's time to fledge he does not stop delivering food.

Now, I'm thinking I should not use this example, lest it lead to more accusations of scientists having never studied wild owls, so let me hasten to add that wild fathers (the owls in rehab ARE Wild owls with a temporary need to be helped, by the way), but in a wild situation, the father behaves the same way. He will hunt like crazy to the point of being ragged and exhuasted and a little addled.

This is why I found myself out in the middle of the night hurling dead mice into the air one July. The father was soo exhuausted and the babies were sooo rowdy and demanding. They were all branching and they mobbed him when he landed, so he just dropped the food onto them (they were standing on the roof of a building about 3 feet from their own nesting place).

I took pity on him and got a big bag of dead mice out of my freezer, defrosted them, and went back to this owl family and tried to get the food to them. If you've read the book, you know the rest of the story - how I was surrounded by scary looking skinhead types, who were not as menacing as I had first thought - or maybe they were more interested in what I was doing than in causing harm. Anyway, they had very strong arms and they hurled the mice up to the family with great accuracy and enthusiasm. I doubt any of us had had quite such an experience before that.

Anyway, the owls were all full and sleepy, including the papa.

So, no, the father and mother do not deliberately withhold the food. Some of the cases we've seen might have been where the parent was a little overwhelmed by the crowd in the box - or the crowding at the doorway, or the parent was hungry, too.

There are species of raptor that do lure their babies out. It's just that each species is completely separate in their behavior. They might hunt or fly similarly, but their social habits might be completely foreign to each other. It's not a case of "if you've seen one bird of prey, you've seen them all". It's not even entirely true withiin a species, since each owl has his own personality. But within barn owls, the parents do not use luring to get the babies to come out.

As you could see in the "pouncing practice" video, the owlets were inspired by their brothers and sisters and by intense curiosity.

All's well that ends well in this case! But if there had been no branches??? We won't even think about that.

I'm SO GLAD this worked out because it shows us that certain criteria are needed, particularly that there must be a branch near to the entrance and parallel to it, so they babies can easily hop-fly to it and grab ahold of it w/ their talons.

YAY!

By the way, I've been travelling to Colorado, FINALLY. It was a little hairy since just as we were about to take off, there was a tornado warning in Denver! And their WAS A tornado, it apparently just didn't touch down. Also, I had two hamsters come up sick (three actually, but two needed urgent treatment) and missed my original flight, so I missed meeting for lunch on the first day w/ Sy Montgomery. But we all met for dinner the next day and that was fun to finally meet everyone in person.

I've missed a lot while I was travelling!

I'm really surprised that they're only showing the outside of the box because Carlos and family are taking some time off. If they're taking time off right as the babies fledge, were they going to just be "unaware" if something happened to a baby? And if they're gone, taking time off, who is taking all the flash pictures? I'm confused. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Maybe their son is minding the babies, ready to call the wildlife people if anything happens. I can't imagine not wanting to be there while the babies are branching, fledging, learning to fly, and finally, learning to hunt. Oh well, I missed it as well, having to travel and meet people, etc.

But I caught most of it on video.

All the best to everyone, and THANK YOU to all of you who cajoled, agitated, talked about branching, asked why it wasn't being done pointed it out, got banned because of it - it was all worth it for those babies, who now have a branching system which they have used extensively to...BRANCH!

And, you know, it IS a made up word! It was made up about 170 years ago to describe the way in which owls branch before they fledge.

The word "DNA" is a made up word, as is "spaceship" or "rocket" or "Quantum Mechanics" or "calculus" or "microscope" or any myriad of words used to describe the discoveries of scientists over the past couple hundred years. heh heh.

Congratulations everybody! You've shown that it does work - to modify the box to allow branching, and educating the world about the needs of owlets raised in boxes!

-Stacey

Stacey

If you're in or near Denver today/this evening DO NOT MISS!!!!

2010-05-18T06:32:00.001-07:00

Sy Montgomery - who is an extremely inspirational person, who has been in just about every jungle on this earth, plus just about every mountain range, who has studied the pink dolphin in the Amazon, the man eating tigers in the Sudarbans, the Snow Leopard in the Himalayas, apes in Africa, Kokapos in New Zealand, Cassowarys in New Guinea, and who wrote The Good Good Pig about her pet pig closer to home - the woman I call "Indiana Jane" is SPEAKING in Denver tonight and, I assume, signing books.

Does Denver know how lucky it is?

Run, don't walk. Get some of her books and have them signed. If you have kids who need someone to look up to, take them to meet Sy Montgomery.

She'll be at the Tattered Cover as follows:

She's at the Tattered Cover on Tuesday at 7:30 pm.
2526 EastColfax Ave. in Denver

Her current book is Birdology, which is a wonderful, delightful book

When i say "studied" I don't mean as a biologist, but more as a naturalist, as someone who wanted to get up close and personal - and DID! a person CAN become a semi-expert about something in nature without having to get a degree in that thing!

Enjoy!

-Stacey
PS: As mentioned earlier, she's in Boulder the following evening at the Boulder Bookstore on Pearl Street.

I'll be speaking in Palos Verdes on June 27 (Los Angeles Area)

2010-05-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Many people have asked me when am I going to be speaking in LA? It's kind of strange - I've only spoken in the LA area 3 times - Once at Vroman's in Pasadena (GREAT BOOKSTORE! IF you don't have an independent bookstore near you, try ordering from Vroman's and having it mailed to you: http://www.vromansbookstore.com).

And once at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, which was a thrill because we used to go there ALL the time as kids. We took turns choosing what the Saturday field trip/family trip/activity was going to be. I almost always chose the Natural History Museum. Love that place!

And once at a writers' conference by the Southwest Manuscripters' - but that was about writing, not as much about Wesley.

That's not a lot of speaking in such a large area so close to my home.

So I'm thrilled to be able to speak in the "LA Area" again (note that the "LA Area" includes a huge conglomerate of smaller "cities" that are all swallowed up in what we call "LA").

Enough trivia..

I'll be at the Palos Verdes BORDERS BOOKS in Rolling Hills Estates on Saturday, June 27, at 2:00pm.
This Borders is in a mall called "Promenade on the Penninsula" at 550 Deep Valley Drive, 90274

I hope you can make it! I'll be speaking, answering questions, and signing books. I'd love to meet you if you're in the area and can come!

Sincerely,
Stacey

ALSO, Sy Montgomery, who I've referred to as "Indiana Jane" in previous posts, who has lived some of the most hair raising adventures of anyone I've ever met, will be speaking in Boulder, Colorado as follows:
Sy Montgomery on tour for the book "Birdology: Lessons Learned from a Pack of Hens, a Peck of Pigeons, Cantankerous Crows, Fierce Falcons, Hip Hop Parrots, Baby Hummingbirds, and One Murderously Big Cassowary"
When: Wednesday, May 19 2010, 07:30 PM
Where: Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl Street

She's also the author of the bestseller, "The Good Good Pig", and has written a myriad of books for grade school kids in the ongoing series about Scientists in the Field. I recommend you go see her if you're in the area!

Another great book to read

2010-05-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

This is a dog book. It's called Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, by Ted Kerasote.

I like how the author interweaves fascinating information about wolves vs. domesticated dogs into the story. The story (nonfiction) is about a dog who chooses the man, and how they live not as dog and master, but as equals. That's where the door comes in - Merle (the dog) has his own doggie door and comes and goes as he pleases, which is helped greatly by the fact that his human lives far from civilization and roads, so Merle is relatively safe running around outside. This would never work in most cases, but it's a great read, and it's fascinating how it can be if both dog and man are equals. Great book, and you'll know a lot more about wolves and dogs when you're done, and will have enjoyed learning it!

-Stacey

My response to comments in previous post

2010-05-16T21:36:00.001-07:00

I wrote these two comments in the "comments" section, in response to Kate and Chipmonk and their experiences after trying to converse w/ the journalist who wrote the article, who said that he may have played down the dangers, and also said that this is "nature, after all", and after trying to email Tom to ask politely if she could talk to him, and having her own email simply emailed back to her as a response...these were my comments about that. And now, apparently, Carlos is announcing to his very large audience that " 'branching' is a made up word."

Stacey O'Brien said...

I've seen a proliferation of anti-science, anti-truth points of view surrounding this whole thing. The "journalist" who dismisses fact, supplanting that with his own uninformed assumptions and the statement that "this is nature after all". Nature? A box on a pole is nature? We really have a problem if we've got a generation of people who truly think that THAT is nature! I feel sorry for them!

Next thing you know they'll be thinking their swimming pool is a natural lake with all the ecosystems you'd find in a real lake - never mind all that chlorine... Suddenly you'll see signs in front yards advertising that you can go "bass fishing" in their backyards...magical thinking will rule the world! "But sir, the bass can't survive in the chlorine!"...
"Well, kid...it's nature's way!"

-Stacey

May 16, 2010 9:07 PM

Stacey O'Brien said...

Those of you who have tried to talk to Tom, know that you are not alone! Over a period of years, many wildlife experts, workers, rehabbers, and fish and game agents have tried to talk to Tom about his design and have explained to him about branching and how the box is horribly designed and how to improve it, and they've all gotten the same brush off that you got.

Let it be well known that HE KNOWS all about what the problems are. He just doesn't want to hear about it or do anything about it.

That's why the only recourse is to enact laws that can be enforced. When people throw away the moral decency, the desire to do the right thing, the desire to do no harm, then all we have left is the law.

When the greed of man runs amuck and no one cares for the lives of the innocent, we must turn to the law, for these people have no internal law by which to measure themselves - no conscience tugging at them. They do not understand the laws of integrity, so we must give them the laws of the courts, the laws that they themselves live by - force.

But since we do live with a conscience, with our own internal laws of integrity, that force must be contained and bound by the law. So it is to the law that we now turn, to make change on behalf of the innocent.

And we will stand and speak for these lovely, innocent, sentient, intelligent beings with whom we share this earth. We are stewards of the earth and of the lives of those less powerful than ourselves who have no voice with which to speak.

There has always been evil, there has always been greed, but there have also been those who are willing to stand up against that evil and greed and say, "enough is enough".

We've come to love these creatures, these little owls, and we can never go back to not knowing that love, so now we'll defend those we've come to love. Love is stronger than evil and stronger than greed.

-Stacey

Note: THREE new posts today plus ONE post RE-EDITED substantially...This is exactly the hop-fly I'm talking about when they branch

2010-05-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

These are some kind of cliff nesting eagle owls, but their body language is the same as barn owls in the way they hop-fly, rather awkwardly, and test out their wings. Plus it's just super cute to watch:

http://www.beleefdelente.nl/oehoe#1273351978

and:

Another link: This Youtuber - LNcello - has an amazing number of Barn Owl clips - plus clips of other birds such as Kestrals.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LNcello

All these are from HeyNicePlanet. THANK YOU HeyNicePlanet!

-Stacey

Union Tribune Article: a section quoted

2010-05-15T23:37:00.001-07:00

msg sent this quote from the article in the union Tribune:

"Maybe the owlets will fly a bit after first leaving home, but it’s more likely that they’ll just flutter to the ground or to nearby perches for more practice. Those prospects are not without their perils, but San Diego’s Project Wildlife is keeping tabs on developments.

“We’ve been in contact with Carlos and have been offering guidance,” said Kristen Pressler, development director at the rehabilitation and rescue organization. “We’ve actually notified our raptor team. They are on alert to step in if anything happens.”

Pressler said the 15-foot drop from the box is not an issue and that the owls are probably safer in the Royal’s backyard than in the wild. “They are going to be just fine,” she said."

Here's the link to the rest of the article
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/15/internet-darling-owls-could-soon-leave-the-nest/

This is a new development. I wonder if they have looked over the situation there? Maybe they do feel that he has made enough improvements for the owlets to make it through the branching and fledging. He HAS added quite a few improvements, mainly the platform and a place to land right outside the door (the lanai, or porch), and even the ladders might be usable by the owlets. I don't know if there's any traction on that platform or not. Once on the ground, they could get up the tree and to that platform.

As I said a while ago, it's a heck of a lot better than it was!

I'm surprised that he's working w/ Project Wildlife, that he hasn't said so in any of his many "fireside chats". Has he said that? Does anyone know if Project Wildlife has been there? I had heard that OO box people were working w/ project wildlife, too, and their setup is MUCH more what i would expect from someone who has worked directly w/ wildlife people because of the design and the carpeting.

Could our liason, Charlotte, please bring this to the attention of Nancy Conney and ask her if she knows about this and if it can be confirmed?

If he is now saying that project wildlife is standing by and will sweep in if anything happens, I would want that confirmed because of the strength of his previous resistance to doing anything like that. I would like to know how closely he is working with them. As close as he's working w/ the media? In other words, have they been to his property the way the media has?

If so, then we can all pat ourselves on the back for appying pressure and public opinion to the situation so that he's gone from saying he wouldn't interfere if a baby got injured and was lying on the ground to saying that project wildlife is standing by, ready to sweep in!

Let's watch and see what really happens here. I can hardly believe it's true, but if it is, I rejoice!

Perhaps we have reached Carlos, even though many of us have been banned in the process. HOWEVER, the article ALSO says:

" publicity also has been good for owl box builder Air Superiority of Ramona by raising awareness about nesting boxes as a pest-control strategy.

“This is the time of the year when my sales are best,” owner Tom Stephan said. “And it’s the best time to be putting up boxes.”"
Again, it's about pest control, not about the survivability of owlets. We still have to get the right design and the new laws into place to stop this proliferation of badly designed and badly placed deathtrap "rodent control" boxes...

Because we can't fight to educate each and every box owner, after the fact. We won't even know about most of them. This was a great opportunity to educate the public and to educate a very public figure, but it's not enough to change the nature of the box makers and the industry they're in.

pest-control strategy indeed!

How about pest control AND barn owl survival strategy combined? Now THAT would work for me.

-Stacey

The additions to Owlivia and Owlberts' box

2010-05-15T22:20:00.001-07:00

Can't remember if the male is called "Owlbert" or what. I know i named my SUV "Truckbert" so maybe I'm mixing things up. Yes, I have an SUV - most people who work w/ animals and wildlife do. It's needed for transporting animals. I've had injured wild creatures in my truck (once, a loose injured possum who, thank god, didn't ruin anything), have packed 23 hamster cages into it, and regularly take my Colorado Mountain Dog on trips - she sleeps in her huge (maximum size?) airline carrying case for safety's sake. If there were an accident I wouldn't want her flying around loose.

Is this what the blog is about? NO! Is this written with the kind of skill you'd expect in a book? NOT AT ALL! But it's a blog, so I can do stream of consciousness, right? Well, at least once in awhile.

So...ARE THE ADDITIONS TO THE OO BOX SUFFICIENT?

I think they must have consulted w/ someone who knew a thing or two about branching owlets, because there IS a platform very near the door, and if the owlets just hopped from the platform to the doorway and back, or from platform to platform and back, they' have the opportunity to strengthen their wings and learn how to use them. See, they literally have to figure out how to use their wings. At first they have the equipment but have no idea how to use it!

There's a video of branching owlets whose wings are fully devloped who can't fly worth anything and drop like stones when they fall off of something.

Here's an example of fully formed barn owl babies who still can't fly. They can hop-fly, but they still drop like stones if they fall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nymPKvygMPY

This is such an important video in so many ways. It shows that even a box in a tree is inadequate if there is no branch right directly in front of the entrance hole!

Why would they not have this same problem in a hollow tree? You can see in this video how they hook their talons into the bark of the tree and pull themselves up, flapping to help themselves along. So in the case of a hollow tree, they can pull themselves up into the hole from a lower branch. They can't do that on a slick owl box. You can see them trying over and over again to get into the box, then falling like stones. Luckily they are caught by lower, springy branches and climb back up. But still can't get back in, and are reduced to standing outside begging. Then, when parents attempt to bring them food, if they get the food at all, they are very likely to drop it on the ground and not be able to go after it, or to be knocked off the branch by the parent, as we see in this video.

In the case of the O&O box, they have put a platform directly in front of the entrance to the box, and another platform further away. The thing that makes these platforms SO DIFFERENT from what we've seen on other boxes, is that the pole they are on does not end at the top in the middle of the platform. The pole leads to the SIDE of the platform, so the babies can pull themselves back onto it. The other KEY difference, and this makes ALL the difference, is that both the pole and the platform are carpeted w/ wall to wall carpeting - which is better than berber or something that they'd get their talons stuck in.

So, if they were to fall, God forbid, and if they weren't injured by the fall, they could either go to that tree nearby and climb it and hide there within the branches, or they could climb the pole w/ the carpet on it and end up on top of one of the platforms and hop-fly their way back into the entrance of the box. I do wish there was a pathway from the tree over to the box entrance in the form of similar platforms, but still, they've taken a lot of important things into account, such as how the babies would get back up onto the platforms.

Finally, the platforms themselves are not slippery! When the babies branch, if they can't wrap their talons around something like a carpet or astroturf covered branch, and if they have to land on a surface, they will slide right across and tumble over the other side unless there's something to grab onto. The carpet ought to be sufficient for them to grab onto it. At least I hope it is!

I can't see if up close, of course, but one can only hope that the carpet is enough for them to grab onto, and that they'll first only hop from the first platform back into the box, and that they can grab the carpet and flap their wings and gain strength. It's a lot better than anything else i've seen lately anyway!

-Stacey

What you can do if you're concerned:

2010-05-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

If you're concerned about the shoddy owl boxes being put up on poles all over America with no consideration for the survival of the babies....

We've decided to do something about this, because the problem is so rampant and does not take into account the survival of the babies! It's JUST for humans to get rodent control out of these innocent owls who are lured into these owlboxes only to have their babies die, over and over again. The lucky ones get rescued and taken to wildlife rescue centers, which are slammed every year with hundreds of babies to raise, teach to hunt, and condition for flying.

So we have formed an alliance to get the laws changed or added to the existing Fish and Game regulations, to require that all owl boxes have certain features and are installed in a certain way.

We'd be happy for you to join us! We're just forming and are brainstorming and working on various things just to get up and running.

Go to yahoo groups and you can join...here's the link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BarnOwlAlliance

-Stacey

EDITED/Ammended: The goal is to mimic nature, not prevent all aspects of nature

2010-05-14T04:59:00.000-07:00

Some of the commenters objected to creating a way for owlets to climb back up andonto a branch, because a predator could use the same contraption to climb up and get to the owlets.

This does happen in nature, occasionally, but remember, we aren't trying to outdo nature, but rather, to imitate it.

I think the question of predation is not an issue. If we are trying to make it as close to a natural situation, which is the hollow tree, then predation is a NATURAL problem to have.

BUT, having thought the matter over further, why shouldn't we try to figure out a way to reduce predation, so as to offset the tremendous damage being done by the "rodent control" boxes (maybe we shouldn't even call them owl boxes, eh?).

You know how there are natural scents that you can buy in gardening catalogs and such, to repel deer from your roses (garlic?) or repel rodents (mint? they hate mint)..I wonder if there is a strong scent that can be put on the posts or trees where there are owl boxes that say to the predator, say to a raccoon, "EEEWWW! Don't climb THIS tree! THIS tree is totally undesireable." It's a good idea! At first, I thought, "well that's pretty normal to face predation in a tree and there's nothing we can do about that." but then thought, "Hey, why not try? So many owls get killed by unnatural forces such as cars and poisons and people's dogs, that it couldn't hurt for us to try to balance that by discouraging unneccesary predation". It's not as if raccoons rely upon owls for their daily bread. They get along just fine w/o killing owls, as do other predators...

So I think our commenter is on to something. Does anyone know of such a substance or where to find out about such a thing? I'd say if we could discourage raccoons and cats we'd have done a lot to help the owlets in the trees.

--------Here's what I said before, when I was thinking there was nothing we could do about it anyway --------

The number of owlets who fall to their deaths and are not able to fledge and go on to reproduce themselves is massive, compared to the small number of owlets who would be found and killed by predators. What we're trying to do is imitate nature so that they can branch and fledge, not prevent every possible scenario that they WOULD face in nature.

Better to have a way to climb up than to have no way, and for them to have to just sit on the ground to wait for a predator to find them. The more the owlets can climb up and move into their box when they feel exposed, the more likely they'll be able to avoid predators.

Lying on the ground w/ a broken wing, or even being down but unable to climb up all but guarantees death by predator.

The way to keep predators from discovering the owlets has more to do with not putting the human scent all over everything, which might cause a predator to climb up out of curiosity.

All this to say, we are not trying to prevent actual acts of nature, but we are trying to prevent unnatural and all but guaranteed death caused by these careless setups for babies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But I now disagree w/ myself and think that we can probably come up with a way to discourage predators from coming up the trees, and still allow the owlets to be able to climb them, and hopefully, that could be done through scent. It's worth a try! Thanks for bringing this question up!

-Stacey

Is there a link between extensive use of owl boxes and endangered status of Barn Owls?

2010-05-13T12:12:00.001-07:00

As I've been looking into this issue more, the more I've started to see a trend. First, I had no idea how extensive the use of Barn Owl boxes really was, but it's extreme. Add to that the loss of traditional wood barns with plenty of ventilation holes in the hay loft, and lots of beams and a big hayloft within which to hop and learn to fly, and the additional loss of hollow trees nationwide, and you have a population of owls that has become highly dependent upon the use of inadequate owl boxes.

They are heavily used in farmlands, orchards, grapevine areas, many of which either have no trees at all, or the trees (in the case of orchards) are too far away from the boxes or too flimsy to be of any good whatsoever to baby owls that need to branch, then fledge.

The owlbox situation has been viewed as successful only because it is viewed entirely from the human perspective.
If you ask the farmer, "How are the owl boxes working out for you?", he's more htan likely to say, "Oh, it couldn't be better!" And he's right - for HIM it's great! The owls made a nest, had babies, and hunted like crazy, keeping the promise of rodent control. Then, when the babies went to try to branch and fledge, they fell from the box and were killed by predators or died slowly on their own, but that's of no concern to the farmer, who probably does't even know it happened.

Then the parents lay more eggs, have more babies, and continue to hunt like crazy, keeping the rodent population in check. Sometimes the parents go on like this for as long as a decade and the farmer is thrilled with the efficacy of the owl box.

In some areas, owls use boxes for 70% of all nests. Seventy percent!

If owls are using boxes on poles that much for their reproduction, then we could be losing he majority of the next generation. And, suddenly we have an endangered owl where we once had many of them. If your next generation has almost no chance of survival.

There may just be a direct link between the extensive use of "box on a pole" owl boxes, and places where the owls are becoming endangered. These owl boxes might just be the main factor contributing to endangerment of Barn Owls, and it wa there all along, right in front of our faces, and we just didn't havethe knowledge about how there is no way for the owlets to branch, then fledge, so there's been dirth of barn owl surviveability,

What to you want to bet that these owlboxes are directly related to the way these owls are disappearing in some areas?
I think the boxes might be a main reason for the endangered status of barn owls. I bet a study of this issue would be mind blowing! PhD candidates and post docs, take note! This could be a good study to take on.

-Stacey

Pertinent links so you don't have to search blog for them;

2010-05-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Barn Owl Alliance yahoo group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BarnOwlAlliance

YouTube video of me talking about Wes w/ footage of him and me together:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vufEqpZZql0

YouTube video of me speaking to a writers' conference about the experience w/ Wesley and the writing of the book):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VENXxP2ghLY&NR=1

Wesley the Owl website:
http://www.wesleytheowl.com

A book recommendation + owl behavior links

2010-05-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

I mentioned this a long time ago, but if you missed it, I'm going to mention it again!

There's a magical book by Lynne Cox called "Grayson"

It's destined to be a classic, and you'd even think it was mythological had it not happened in front of a myriad of witnesses right off the coast here near Long Beach! Lynne is a world champion cold water swimmer - having swum the bering strait in a BIKINI, for example, dodging the floating ice all the way. She's done the English channel and held the title for the youngest and fastest. She has the record for swimming from Catalina to the mainland and even swam the Cape of Good Hope while a white shark came at her to attack her, and one of the divers there to protect her fought the shark off. YIKES!

So she was doing her morning workout, which is so far beyond what any of us could even imagine doing. She'd swim all the way to the oil platforms and back. One morning a baby gray whale came up to her and grunted and made other sounds. He was lost! He couldn't find his mother! She stayed with him for hours while trying to help him find his mother. You HAVE to read this. It's really short but it's one of those books you think about for a long time afterward.

Her other book, "Swimming to Antarctica" is so inspiring you'll wonder why you ever got discouraged or ever gave up on anything. This woman just does not give up. Period. If it takes 12 years of constant letter writing to get through to some politician(in this case Gorbachov himself) so that you can swim the bering strait during the cold war, you keep at it!

I think for us in the Barn Owl Alliance, her story can be particularly inspiring, since she just never seemed to even consider giving up no matter how difficult the way was going to be. And she seems to have won every time - it was her persistence and patience and how she never gave up, long after most people would have.

This book will give you some perspective and make you want to just dig in and work on this thing and FIX it, by gosh. And we will, but it may take a long time and a lot of patience. And if it does, the patience of Lynne Cox might be just the thing to think about if we get impatient and discouraged!

So...get Grayson, and "Swimming to Antarctica" by Lynne Cox! You won't regret it!

And Grayson in particular makes a lovely gift for just about any age group.

I still haven't flown to Colorado due to an ongoing migaine! Whew! I want to get this thing over with and go see my friends in Colorado! But I, too, must be patient!

Sincerely,
Stacey

PS: Here are some links of owl behaviors:

BarnOwlVideos – properly placed barn owl boxes in Suffolk County

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wo8_bQpdNM&feature=related

Barn owl swallowing a mouse whole:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVSXQKmL6ZM&feature=related

Hunting great grey (?) catches mouse under snow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TS4jMtL8Ck&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Rehabbers handling/feeding baby barn owl:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA-vTw_RSX4

baby barn owl hiss/scream (fear):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_bdAJXsjvk&feature=related

baby owls branching (not barnies):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY_5Hqvzc8I&feature=channel

properly set up owlbox w/ branching owlets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642w56bDH5c&feature=related

A branching owl, sitting on branch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMOVrJRbXAE&NR=1

short clip of branching owl hopping to another branch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc51IqRAn64&feature=related

Barn owl flying to music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55SSd5MUKus&feature=fvw

Barred Owl vocals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fppKGJD3Y6c&feature=related

Watching baby barn owls

2010-05-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

This is possibly the best time to watch the personality of the baby barn owls blossom. If you're watching one of the boxes, and I still think the audio and video on the Molly owl box is by far the best for watching - hey you don't have to chat. What I do when I want to watch is I maximize the video feed screen so it fills my entire screen. Then I sit back and ENJOY! I have the sound on so I can hear the new twitters and little comments the owls make, as well as the not-so-little sounds. lol.

They are very active during the day, now, because they have so much work to do on their feathers. The feathers are growing in so fast - these adult feathers that grow in through a keratin shaft.

I've explained this on the chat and in my book, but in case you missed it, the way these feathers grow in is amazing. First, a keratin shaft begins to grow up out of the skin. Keratin is what's in our hair and fingernails. Inside is a living organ, the pinfeather, which has nerves and blood vessels and which is creating the feather. It's one of the more miraculous processes in nature.

As the pinfeather grows to the length that the feather will be, it starts to finish the job of making the feather, and the blood and nerves start to recede, leaving in their place a perfect barn owl feather (in this case) at the tip. Once the feather is perfected, and the blood and nerves are receding slowly, the part that's done can be released by pulling off the keratin sheath. The way you know it's done is that it becomes white and waxy. So the barn owl pulls the white, waxy part at the tip of each feather off, and out springs a perfect end of a feather. But he can't go too far down, because further down is the dark part- and that's the blood filled, nerve filled part that's still making a feather.

If you're grooming an owl and you are pinching the waxy white part, it sort of breaks up under your fingers and you either brush it away or gently pull it off. But if you pinch too far down, on the dark part, it's extremely painful and the owl will scream! You do NOT want to pinch or push on a pinfeather that's living, because they're soo soo sensitive.

One has to be very careful in how one picks up a baby owl full of pinfeathers, too! If one were to just put ones hands around him and pick him up, it would be like he'd been skewered by a thousand red hot icepicks. So, when they're that young, they must be picked up from the feet, very gently and slowly.

The barn owls we've been watching on the Molly box, and soon on the Owlivia box, are very busy pulling the ends of their pinfeathers off and arranging the new flight feathers, grooming themselves. They look like maybe they're itchy and worrying over bugs, but in my experience it's rare to find an owl with bugs on him. Only if they have a very compromised immune system do you see any kind of mites or lice on them.

So they're working hard on their feathers.

If you look at the flight feathers under a microscope you can see that the edges have tiny little barbs and hooks that literally zip together! So when an owl does a long groom through his beak - he takes a long feather and runs it through his mouth from base to tip - he's literally zipping the side together so it'll be more effective for flying!

These guys cannot fly at all. Even if they beat their wings, they can't fly. It's a combination of still being too heavy, and the fact that the wings have to be in a certain position in order to catch the air and produce flight. The owls have to learn this through practice, practice, practice. And they fall quite easily.

Watching them in the box during the day, you see their personalities forming. Often you can see them getting playful and pouncing on any little thing in the box. They'll focus on something small like a pellet, then pounce on it and worry it w/ their feet and beak, then pounce again. They're playing! They scratch at the stuff on the floor just in general playfulness. They can be easily compared to kittens at this age. You know how kittens will suddenly get playful and focus on the silliest, tiniest thing as the object of their play. It's more about feeling playful than it is about the object.

It's just fun to watch their facial expressions at this age, too. They are waking up to the world around them. They're becoming curious and playful and fascinated with everything. It's a most endearing age for an owlet.

So don't forget to just enjoy the owls for who they are, and not let human behavior surrounding the owls ruin that for you. This is still an amazing experience that few will ever have in their lives, and you'll continue to learn a lot about owl behavior, just by watching.

I'm amazed at how much everyone has learned just through watching. Many people can even distinguish the owls based on their individual behavior, which is really quite an accomplishment!

Stacey

2010-05-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

Hey! Anyone in the U.K. who has been involved in the process of regulation and is involved w/ the regulatory process there want to advise us about what works and what doesn't? Even what design is best, the pluses and minuses of various designs and setups?

This is the text from a UK page. Note how the boxes are all monitored by conservationists? And they have a picture of the design, from above. I am a big fan of the design w/ the separate entrance that protects the owls from direct wind and weather - with the hallway they have to go through to get to the entrance. It solves a myriad of problems. This design, however, needs work. It needs an 8 or 10 inch drop from the doorway into the box itself so the babies won't easily fall out, and won't be able to get to the door until they are at least strong enough and coordinated enough to climb up to it. It also has a perch just 6 or so inches outside the door, which is a place to start and hold on, while contemplating other branches to hop to. It's a start.

We ought to be looking at other box designs and coming up with what we think is idea. There's no need to rush to judgement on this. I think a circumspect, careful survey of what's out there and what works is needed before we make recommendations for a regulation box in the US. But this is a place to start, anyway.

I don't think I can load the picture, which is worth a thousand words, so here is the link that shows the interior design of the box, with 2 owlets posing in there for good measure, although since the top is off the box I imagine these are rehabbing birds...

To see the picture, go to:
http://www.hawkandowl.org/About_us/SupportUs/AdoptABox/AdoptABox

This is a U.K. Program;
Adopt a Box
Adopt a Box: wild birds of prey need places to nest
Adopt a Box with the Hawk and Owl Trust
Adopting a nestbox through the Hawk and Owl Trust is fun.You'll be kept up to date with what's going on in your adopted box.You can also learn more about barn owls and the other birds that use the special nestboxes put up and monitored.
Shortage of homes
Loss of old hollow trees and conversion of barns for housing has dramatically reduced the supply of traditional nesting sites for species such as owls. It is estimated that four in every five barn owls now use nestboxes, demonstrating how important boxes are for this species.
Tawny owls, little owls and kestrels are also benefiting from nestboxes, which are put up in carefully selected areas with suitable feeding habitat.
How you can help
Adopt a Box yourself or as a present for a friend - it is a worthwhile way to help owls and other birds of prey. There are nestboxes in many parts of the country and you can Adopt a Box in one of seven regions.

During the breeding season specially trained and licensed conservationists monitor the boxes. Each year you will receive news of the birds that may have used the box allocated to you.You might be lucky enough to hear that eggs were laid and young reared. Most of the boxes are designed for barn owls but other species which might use them are tawny or little owls, kestrel or jackdaw.

Protecting the breeding birds
In the interest of conservation we cannot tell you exactly where your box is. The nests of all birds of prey are protected and barn owls have additional legal protection. It is vital that the birds are not disturbed while rearing their young. Furthermore other adopters may share your box.

-Stacey

CORRECTION!

2010-05-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned Marc Bekoff several times in this blog, and recently, when talking about him and his work and his books, I have said he was a co-founder of the Jane Goodall Institute. He sent me an email correcting me. I apologize profusely for getting that wrong! I don't know where I heard that, but I never checked because I assumed it was true, which was stupid of me. He does work with Jane Goodall on projects and has been on some documentaries with her.

His work is great, his books are absolute MUST READs if you care about animals and what's being learned about them and their emotional lives and sentience. He has so much to say and says it so well! He's another one of my "modern day heroes". I have never actually met him, but have been trying to do so since he wrote a very kind blurb for me about Wesley the Owl and has been so supportive of a new author coming out of nowhere, in spite of how busy he is.

If you haven't read Marc Bekoff, get his books and start!

I'll find where I misrepresented him and make the corrections.

Again, I apologize profusely!

Sincerely,
Stacey

One small correction from way back when - but please read the post AFTER this, which is my REAL post for today ;-)

2010-05-08T15:06:00.001-07:00

I've been wanting to explain a small thing that isn't all that important, but I do NOT want it to detract from the post I wrote today, that's below this one! So please, don't think that the post below this is old! It's new! I wish I knew how to insert this one after the one I just wrote earlier. Sigh.

But here's the smallish thing I wanted to explain. A long time ago, someone on the chat asked me, "Do you think Molly will stay w/ the babies until they fledge, or do you think she'll start hunting and leaving the nest?"

I answered according to what I thought, and it has been used over and over again, since then, to say, "See? Biologists don't know about these things and they are wrong! We discovered that they're wrong!"

Now, I'm fine w/ being wrong. You have to be wrong in order to go through the learning process - you have to be wrong before you can be right, you know?

But in this case, there were subtleties...I said something to the effect of, "In most of the successful nests I've observed, the mother stays with the babies until they start to fledge/branch, and the father hunts to feed both the mother and the clutch of babies, if there is good hunting and the mother isn't forced to look for additional food."

At that time, McGee was providing plenty of food.

But the subtlety is that I have ONLY studied WILD NESTS that were NATURAL, ironically! haha! I had not studied artificial homes like this box. And the word "successful" in describing the nests is a crucial one that has been eliminated from discussions of what I said.

And it's still true - in most successful nests (to me that means all the babies survived to fledge successfully), the mother did stay for a long time.

By doing that, she prevented the weakening and possible death of the youngest owlet, who has to compete w/ his bigger, stronger, more aggressive clutch-mates for every morself of food. The baby is less mobile, less coordinated, and weaker. As you saw, w/ the mother in the nest she can still feed the youngest, ensuring that he gets a good meal, rather than allowing the older ones to just eat and eat until they're totally stuffed while the youngest goes hungry.

But as we saw, after I said that, the porch went up and Molly left for a day, and she never went back to hanging out w/ the babies in a serious way, so youngest baby Wesley was now in a position where he had to compete for food. From then on, you could hear him scream in outrage occasionally during the scuffle that resulted from a food drop. I've seen, in many cases where the baby screams in outrage, where even if he somehow gets ahold of the food first, an older baby will snatch it right out of his beak and he can't do much about it. Yet he is actually more hungry than the older baby who snatched it from him!

While this nest may end up being successful, as we saw, Wesley had a hard time and was weakened, probably by lack of food. And food also means fluids, as you can see. ALL their fluids come from prey, not from water itself.

I hope he has rallied now and is going to make it! I'm actually praying he will! Hey, why not?

And w/ the Owlivia box, she lost her two youngest babies, apparently from starvation related reasons. The reason I concluded that is that Owlivia wasn't poisoned, so it is logical to conclude that the babies were not poisoned also, since they shared food, and she "took care of" the dead babies in a way that ensures that she wouldn't have two rotting corpses in the box to cause maggots, ants, or draw scavengers, or make the box more nasty than needed for the other owls. A dried skin or strip of stray meat is one thing. Two decaying corpses would have been too much. So, since that happened and she didn't die, I have to conclude it was not a poisoning.

As you may know, Owlivia was leaving the box to hunt, also. This may have been driven by the lack of food, however, and may have been a no-win situation. If she had stayed in the box, it looked to me like Owlbert wasn't finding enough food on his own and they may have all been inadequately fed.

Some people asked if the father "with-holds" food to try to lure the mother out to hunt. NEVER!

An owl does not see prey and say, "No, even with hungry babies at home, I am going to let that one pass so that my mate will be compelled to come out and help me! Nope, it's her problem. If she wants food, let her get her lazy butt out here and hunt. It's not fair for me to do all the hunting, after all!"

NO! He hunts with all his heart, urgently, in great earnestness and sincerity, and races the food back to the nest as fast as he can, occasionally stopping to eat the heads off the prey, for as you know, the head is by far the most delicious part of the prey and is very nutritious for him. Hence the delivery of headless rodents to the mother.

But they don't manipulate like people do.

All this to clarify that what I had said was that in successful nests, the father ISI able to bring in enough prey ( a good example is the nest I was watchinig in La Costa at the La Costa Coffee Roasters. Even w/ the babies all branched and learning to fly, the mom stayed w/ them full time. The babies were wildly successful and all made it to adulthood. The father nearly drove himself into the ground hunting, yet the female did not go out to hunt. His obvious exhaustion is what caused me to decide to help him one night, and I found myself flinging dead mice from my own stash into the air at 3am....the rest of that story is in the book.

So it's not as if I've never seen a mother going out to hunt. But when I have seen that, often the nest is not 100% successful in providing for ALL the babies to survive.

I wanted to clarify this because it has been dragged up so many times as an example of how scientists "don't know anything", and that is all based upon a misunderstanding of what I said.

on that fast moving chat, I was reading one question while trying to answer another in a short, to the point way. I never said it was impossible for Molly or Owlivia to decide to go out of the nest and hunt. That box is also too small and hot and was getting ncomfortable for the adult owls.

I love the idea of putting owl boxes inside an outbuilding that has a hole for the owls to go into, mimicking a barn. If the outbuilding had the perches up like the rafters of a barn, it would provide shade and shelter from the elements. There is an example of this in the Barn Owl Trust in England, although there are also examples of bad boxes and the resulting broken and dead babies below the box. So even inside an outbuilding, the babies need a place to hop from and to.

And that's what we're going to change.

The post below this one is the mosr important post by far! This one is about behavior and about this little misunderstanding, but the one below is about us organizing into a group to ensure the best chances of survival for the baby ban owls of the future!

Love and peace to you all and to all the wild ones!
Stacey

The official YAHOO group for the Barn Owl Alliance:

2010-05-08T12:39:00.001-07:00

If you signed up and then the group disappeared, fear not! All that's happened is the name has been changed and the eaddress. The new e-address is:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BarnOwlAlliance

I've created an alliance account for barn owl Alliance discussions ONLY! :
staceyobrienbarnowls@yahoo.com

Personal email from readers can be sent to me at:
wesleytheowl@yahoo.com

(NOTE: If the mail is about planning an event, please don't use the wesleytheowl@yahoo.com address, because it gets mixed up in reader mail and I may not get to it in the timely way it needs to be attended to. For event planning, please go to my website and click on the contact button there.)

I agree that we ought to be trying to push for a certain standard in all owl box design, something like:

All barn owl boxes must have:
This perching system
That climbing back up system
This depth from the door to the floor
That level of ventilation
This amount of perpetual shade
Be free from obstacles that could fall on it
These dimensions
The following approved design

Then anyone could build it and continue their business as owl box builders, only this time, they'd have to not only adhere to design standards, but would have to get a permit - which needs to be EASY TO GET and NOT COSTLY so that people can make a living putting these up, and so that nonprofit organizations such as hungryowl.org aren't stressed by fees.

Enforcement should be put into the existing code that's already enforceable by the dept of fish and game statewide, and the Federal Dept of Fish and Wildlife.

They already enforce all KINDS of laws about raptors and owls, and already have in place a police force that does such things as seizures of owls in homes that have no permit for the owl, making sure rehab centers don't have unpermitted, unreleasable owls. EVERY owl in captivity has a permit and is regulated.

Also, they catch and prosecute anyone who has shot an owl or tried to mess w/ a wild nest in a harrassing way...they issue permits to biologists for things like going in and banding, and regulate how that's done..

So we already have the structure in place and don't have to reinvent the wheel. All we have to do is push for new regulations on owl boxes! Thank God we don't have to come up with a police force and a way to pay for it! It's paid for by hunting and fishing permits, which kind of creates a bit of a conflict of interest - ie. they are more interested in helping hunters and fisherpeople...but they do have officers just for wildlife interests beyond game, and those people are very dedicated, like the federal officer who's been wringing her hands over the owl boxes in San Diego for years, but has no law by which she could DO anything about it!

So the officers themselves would welcome a reason to be able to intervene! We are here to untie their hands!

I'm going to be offline for a couple of days, I think, and back on on Monday. It's because I'm moving over to my Colorado home away from home and it takes relocating my dog and all of my hamsters (imagine finding a place for all those hamsters for over a month!)...packing, and there's a lot more than regular packing because I'm also packing for projects to be done while in Colorado.

While there, I'll be meeting w/ Sy Montgomery, the "Indiana Jane" I referred to in other posts, who has travelled extensively in the Amazon, in Borneo and New Guinea, and the Sudarbans where the man eating tigers live. Not just travelled, but immersed herself and studied elusive creatures such as the Amazonian pink dolphin, the man eating tigers, the cassowary in New Guinea, and I think the Snow Leopard in the Himalayas.

She and I have developed a great friendship over the phone and internet but have never met in person! I also hope to connect w/ Marc Bekoff if he's in town. If possible, will no doubt pick both of their brains (that is such a gross expression. I always picture it visually, unfortunately) about what we're trying to accomplish, and ask for any suggestions or guidance.

The Jane Goodall Institute has fought many battles that were far more contentious than what we are trying to do, with the bushmeat and poaching going on all over Africa. They are swimming upstream against a deeply entrenched, continental cultural issue that is so enormous it's hard to even wrap your head around it (another rather odd visual image!).

So I'm sure they've learned a lot of lessons about what works and what doesn't! Since Marc Bekoff has done work w/ Jane Goodall, maybe he has some ideas for us. I don't even know if I'll actually be able to connect with him, but I'll try.

If you want to call it the Stacey O'Brien Barn Owl Alliance, as has been suggested, it might give it a bit of a punch, I don't know. I'll let you guys decide about that. I will continue to write about owls, as in the next book, and the book is doing well in many languages and countries, so it might give recognition internationally. But I DO NOT need the ego gratification of having it called that, and I realize that this is not MY organization. It is OUR organization. In fact, all I'm doing is writing. It's you guys who are coming up with action and self-assigning different jobs. It will take a lot of different kinds of skills to do this - people w/ legal knowledge and abilities for the 501(3)c and a website if someone is able to pull that off, logo - if someone can do that,...

About using a wild barn owl - I think that's a great idea. There are a lot of "stock" photos of wild barn owls. I wish I remembered where I got it, but for a long time I had a free stock photo of a barn owl flying low over a field - a close up - as my screen saver.

There are a lot of free photos we could use.

As for using pics off of my website, they just need to say "www.wesleytheowl.com" on them in a watermark, or be attributed as such. The pictures that look like the cover of the book are mostly shot by Wendy Francisco. The others are pretty much taken by me. If the pics are put into a book or flyer or newspaper, they should have a tiny line as you see in other photos that say "photo by Stacey O'Brien" or "Photo by Wendy Francisco". If there's confusion as to which is which, the www.wesleytheowl.com attribution is better than none at all. Most photos that have me in them were taken by Ann Baker.

Wendy licenses the use of the pictures she took for the book covers, worldwide, and is paid a small royalty on that based on book sales. So in cases where the pictures are being used by a publisher, they might want to take that into consideration.

Once we decide on the full name of the organization, I'll ask Wendy (who owns and operates my website) to put a link up on the site in a prominent place so that other people who are interested can join!

As mentioned above, I've got an email address now just for the Alliance:

staceyobrienbarnowls@yahoo.com

My other, unlisted email is so inundated w/ business concerns (I have something like 9 separate publishers, each with their own people, around the world, plus people I need to talk to about events and journalists I need to communicate w/) that it overflows and bounces mail even from my poor longsuffering editor and the people at Simon and Schuster. I don't know how big authors do it, truly. I only have one book in 9 languages. How do people with many books in 50 languages do it? Maybe they have assistants? Anyway...

I will try to stay on top of this new email...

staceyobrienbarnowls@yahoo.com

please use this ONLY for the alliance business.

Regular reader email can be addressed to
wesleytheowl@yahoo.com

I am painfully slow at responding to reader email but I do get to it eventually!

I hope people will respect the intended use of these email addresses. On the alliance email, I'll only respond to email that relates directly to what we're trying to accomplish, to try to keep it from getting full and overwhelmed by email that isn't about what we're trying to do here. It should be an email dedicated to the business at hand as we communicate w/ each other in forming our group and establishing our goals and how to accomplish them.

Thanks, everyone, for the work you've already done and the great ideas you've already put out there!

If anyone is wondering what I'm talking about, a lot of planning is going on in the "comments" sections after my blog entries, so please read those to see what people are doing and how we are organising.

We do need to switch much of this over to the yahoo group, which is more conducive to discussion than the blog.

I also do think the chat option on the group ought to be activated. I don't want to have to moderate it, but I sure don't want it to descend into a place to put spam, either. Does anyone know how to do that?

Maybe we ought to schedule our meetings on the chat, so we all know when to go there.

As has been pointed out, it needs to be a time that's good for both West and East coasters.

A lot of people are working until at least 6pm, but that makes it 9pm in the East, which is some people's bedtime...

I am, personally, much more functional in the evenings. In Colorado, I'm not available Sat-Tues nights, which leaves Wed, Thurs and Fri nights, if we want to do an evening group meeting.

On the other hand, I'll be back from Colorado in June, and will be more free - BUT I do tend to travel, If I'm travelling, on weekends, for events.

That's my schedule. The rest of the time I'm sleeping, so I can set an alarm and be up for meetings.

It doesn't have to be evening, by any means. I'm just letting you guys know when I'm personally available but that doesn't keep you guys from picking another time of day or week. If you pick mornings or early afternoon, for example, I'll adjust! ;-)

The most important thing to me is that all the people who are actually working on some aspect of this can get together at one time to compare notes, for now.

YeeeeHAAAA! This ROCKS!

Love and Peace,
Stacey

Making Changes: Part 2 : The Alliance : We are doing this!

2010-05-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

If you want to know how the organizing is going, look at the comment section under the blog entry titled: Making Changes.

I vote for the yahoo group that's already been set up. I also think we ought to use the word Barn Owl in our name, because owls can be very different in their behavior. For example: Great Horned owls generally are not attracted to boxes, and many owls will not adapt to anything other than their original habitat.

The American Barn owl IS a specific species - there are many species of Barn Owl - Asian ones, African ones, European ones, etc. If you use "America" to mean "North America" you are fine with using "American" Barn Owl Alliance or Defenders.

I'm partial to Alliance also because it was the 'good' in the good vs. evil of the Star Wars series. The Jedi warriors were the "Alliance", right? We are like the jedi warriors for owls. heh heh.

Since there's a yahoo group already established, let's run with it! A lot of people really hate facebook, myself included. It's just so random and goes off in so many different directions, and it's hard to protect your privacy ..I dunno...I like the yahoo group idea. I've seen it work well for very specific groups with specific goals.

I do think we ought to become a 501(c)3. Any lawyers among us that could put that together without us having to scrape together a big hunk o' money to pay a lawyer?

I also agree that Charlotte ought to be the only one calling Nancy Conney, since she's so busy w/ her many raptors and it's baby season, which is just SLAMMED with injured barn owls, especially in San Diego county. And you ALL KNOW WHY!!

And we are going to change that.

Also, I think for now, our goals are pretty specific: We want to change laws to require adequate boxes for barn owls that are
-Big enough
- have a deep enough entrance so barn owlets don't fall out
- have an adequate branching system included w/ the box
- must be installed in the shade
- must be properly ventilated
- a "log" type structure that mimics a tree, that they can grab onto w/ their talons and "walk" their way back up to the nest while beating their wings - another important pre-flight behavior.

I am so glad he did install a new perch for them to hop to! I haven't seen it. I just can't bring myself to go over there quite yet. Give me a little time and I'll go over and look.

About doing chats: I think that's a great idea, but I would not be up for a 24/7 chat. I mean, I guess someone could put one up but if it's just sitting there all day long, it can easily descend into a recipe sharing chat or a gossip line.

for me, I would like to do more focused chats, that are scheduled, for answering questions and having discussions. Then we'd all know what we wanted to ask or talk about, and we'd know when we were going to gather each week to do so. What do you think of that?

Yes, my blog is copyrighted, but you can quote it like you would any copyrighted material as long as you mention the source of the quote (eg: as Stacey O'Brien states in her blog, "blah blah blah". Like that.)

Here are the links that have been set up so far:

Name: Barn Owl Alliance or Barn Owl Defenders or either of those w/ the word "American" before it.
Yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BarnOwlDefenders
Email for a mailing list being assembled: itacri@comcast.net (Itacri, if this is not ok, let me know! I assume it's ok and ran w/ it!)

I think we ought to keep "Barn Owl" In the name, even though other species occasionally do use these boxes, because they are specifically for barn owls. Also, our current mission is specific to Barnies. We may grow into a much bigger organization, who knows? We may end up being THE alliance for owls or something like that.

But for now, I think American Barn Owl Alliance is great! I like Alliance because we are equals, we are allied people from all walks of life with a specific concern and goal, which is to change federal and state laws to require that the above list of features be present in any barn owl box put up, and that those laws be enforced w/ specific systems (permits? Penalties? Fines? - if you mess with a barn owl in any OTHER way, for example, I think it's a mandatory $25,000 fine and 6 months in jail. Why is it then ok to lure them to your property only for them to work so hard to raise babies that are doomed from the beginning?)

As I alluded to above, American Barn Owls are a specific species, different from the barn owls on other continents.

But I'm not the queen of this, so if you want to be Barn Owl Defenders, or whatever, that's fine. I just think we ought to stick to the one thing for now.

After we've succeeded with this and the laws and enforcement are in place for the barn owl box situation, we could work on the rodent poison issue. I was in Rite Aid today and saw a whole shelf of rodent poison. It made me sick to think about all that poison, in all these stores across our country, being put out into the wild for our brother and sisters in the wild to consume. Scary! But that's a different battle.

We probably ought to do one battle at at time, eh?

By the way, I am happy that Carlos has put something up for those poor babies to hop to. They have half a chance now! Thank God!

I'm very excited that people have taken the ball and run with it! This is AMAZING! I never dreamed in a million years about anything like this happening! It's beyond my wildest hopes and it's just awesome! We CAN make a difference! People have been doing that for decades and now it's our turn! We're educating ourselves, learning, contacting experts..this is being well thought out. I'm so proud of everyone!

--------------------- Answers to questions about the current behavior of the owlets --------------

A commenter asked about why the babies are grabbing the pellets on the floor of the box - they are trying to do the behavior where they grab onto a branch with all their might and beat their wings to build strength in their wings that will be needed for them to fly. That box also seems a little too small for them to really beat their wings properly, but that issue has been around for eons w/ too small hollow trees, etc. so I think they'll still adapt.

The same commenter also asked about the hops the babies are taking. That is the preflight behavior! Those hops will then extend (when the owlets are ready) to the new perch Carlos installed. See, without that perch, there would have been nowhere to hop to, and they would have eventually fallen to the ground instead.

About the feathering: The feather is formed within a shaft made of keratin, which is a waxy substance that we have in our hair and fingernails. The new feather being formed is a living thing w/ blood and nerves in it. As it becomes complete, the blood and nerves recede and the part of the shaft that can be pulled off becomes very white. The owl grooms and pulls of the white waxy stuff, and out blooms a perfect feather. The shaft recedes, so the tips of the feathers come out first, going down, until the base is finally finished and it's all feather and no shaft.

When there are too many of the flight feathers still in the shafts (they're called "pinfeathers" at this point), there isn't enough lift to fly, but the babies need this time to build muscle in their newly developed wings. Remember when they were just nubs? So they are doing exercises to make muscle across their chest and into their wings, and grooming their feathers daily as they emerge from the shafts.

This is one of the most exciting times - watching the owlets as they hop and branch. The expressions on their faces through all this are priceless! They can move the tiny muscles in their faces, which is why they can be so expressive! And their curiosity grows daily, so you see all the head gyrations as they become fascinated with every little thing in their world. They are truly coming into their own, and their individual personalities are bursting forth. It's such a joy to watch this process, which is why I was so motivated to try to get it so that we could all see the wonderful event unfolding in the way that it should! It's SUCH a treat!

So I encourage you all to enjoy the show and not deprive yourselves of it just because I've been banned or you've been banned. We can still watch the video feed, which is what we care about and can continue to learn from. If we're going to become advocates for owls, it behooves all of us to continue to watch, so as to educate ourselves not just with book knowledge but with observational understanding. All of us can become naturalists, and it's often naturalists, rather than biologists, who have made some of the most important positive changes in our country (look at how Roosevelt worked to establish the national parks, for example).

If you are told that a baby "just flew away on its own" and it disappears, do NOT BELIEVE IT! They do NOT just fly off. They MUST go through this branching phase for awhile before they can fly. You'll be able to watch their progress from straight hopping, to hopping w/ some lift, to some crazy flights w/ a terrified expression on their face and their talons held out in front of them, to watching them figure out how to use their wings to brake and hover, and then to actually fly accurately and pounce on a branch w/ confidence and make a solid landing.

Landing is a big issue for them.

So, if a baby disappears and you're told her just 'flew away' and he didn't go through those phases, know that he probably fell and injured himself land call Nancy and see what can be done! Now that there's a new place to land, I think they will probably (I say PROBABLY) will manage. The only thing missing now is something for them to use to climb up. Again, putting astroturf on one of the ladder supports might work since the supporting legs are slanted... Here's hoping! :-)

It looks to me like you were effective when you pointed out problems on the Owlivia and Molly sites! I'm told that both sites have added perches!

You are to all be congratulated for your first triumph as the alliance!

YAY, US!

Stacey :-)

More books, and "our quest"

2010-05-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

Hi! In response to comments from the last post:

YES I have read Sterling North's book, Rascal! I have it on my shelf too. It's continually in print, still! Now THAT is a good book, and to still be in print, well that kind of proves it!

Sterling North has another book that's sort of a sequel to that. He and his wife and kids moved to the woods and lived with all kinds of wild ones in his adulthood, and were kind of early wildlife helpers or rehabbers. I think he even slept in bed w/ a bear at one time.

I don't remember if I've read Jon Katz. Seems like I've read something of his.

Speaking of authors named John, I love all of John Krakauer's books. He brings in all the little motivations and makes his subject real to the reader.

If you're a birder and want to read a much heavier book, scientifically speaking, there's nothing like the classic, The Singing Life of Birds by Don Kroodsma!

Another fascinating book is Illumination in the Flatwoods where the author does an immersion study with a flock of wild turkeys and keeps a diary. It grows on you as a book until you find yourself immersed yourself, in their world.

I once rescued a wild turkey, and on my last trip to Julian, stopped to watch wild turkeys. They're smart. I've never met domestic turkeys, but I know that wild turkeys are pretty smart. And curious! A flock of wild turkeys will stop and surround a snake and watch it out of curiosity, sharing the experience!

If you love books about a deep relationship with an animal, read The Good, Good Pig by Sy Montgomery! Her pig, Christopher Hogwood, was the love of her life for some 14 years. Imagine!

Other recent great books for me were Three Cups of Tea about the mountain climber who got lost and disoriented in the mountains of Afghanistan and was taken in by a very small village - a tribal village. He saw the dismal lack of schools and the peoples' determination to still learn, and pledged to come back and build schools for the people - girls and boys. He has done that very thing! He has the blessing of the Imams there, even though he is not a Muslim. The whole thing is a kind of miracle. My cousin, Tammy, recommended that book to me.

And yes, I have read the books about the Cat Who Went to Paris - the Peter Gethers books! They are wonderful!

Along the same lines, there's Ginny, the Dog who Rescues Cats - amazing book and sequel! This dog literally has some kind of calling to rescue cats in distress - abandoned in old buildings, trapped in unusual places - and his owner just takes him on walks through NYC (I think. It's a big city anyway) and the dog leads him to the most unlikely places where there will always be a cat needing rescue!

Because of this wonder-dog, the owner rescues all these cats and puts them into a network of cat loving rescue people. Amazing.

I have also read Marc Bekoff's books. He's a passionate advocate for animals. In fact, he may be able to offer us advice as to how to proceed. I'll try to contact him while I'm in Colorado.

We've been trying to get together for the last 3 years, whenever I'm in Colorado, but since he's Jane Goodall's partner in founding the Jane Goodall Institute, and in much of her work now, you can imagine how busy he is!

------ Our Newfound Quest to help owlets to survive by changing the way owlboxes are done in this country ------------

He, -Marc Bekoff- would be a good person to talk to about our quest, though, because both he and Jane Goodall never set out to become 'activists' or a voice for the animals, but as they got involved w/ their animal species, they ended up having almost no choice. Do you sit by and not do anything when the animal you've come to love and understand so intimately is being misused, abused, or pushed to extinction?

At some point, they both had to leave a lot of their research and spend most of their time in the act of trying to protect animals - being a voice for the voiceless and innocent animals.

We are on this trek together. But we can do this, I think!

I'm excited about the idea of a yahoo group as a clearinghouse for ideas, discussions, links, contacts, information, and resources!

Even though the situation in the Gulf is the focus for wildlife people right now, and that is so overwhelming it's almost beyond words, there's no reason we can't be getting our act together - learning and figuring out how to go about this. By the time we've organized there will be room for us to start lobbying for change. We'll make room! ;-) The baby owls are being hatched and trying to fledge out of God knows how many boxes even as we speak. And, as you might already know, the "Common" barn owl is actually endangered in some parts of the country! It's not as though they are just thriving like crazy everywhere... and wouldn't it be beautiful to enable them to come back in to areas from which they've been pushed out?

About the facebook page, I am still unschooled in facebook. I have tried it and found it to be very disjointed, but once I get to Colorado, I hope I"ll have time to sit down and figure it out a little more and I will try to get on the MODS & MADS page ( see Thom's comment on the blog before this one).

Thanks everyone!
-Stacey

PS: If you have kids, there is a series of kids' books about scientists and what they do. Sy Montgomery has written several of them. They're the "Scientist in the Field" books. For example there are titles such as The Snake Scientist or The Tarantula Scientist. I think they are great for kids if you want to inspire them to go into science, or just let them see that there are some very interesting ways to spend ones' life, in science. It brings understanding of what scientists really do out there, and what it takes to do it. But I must warn you that the kids will see that the scientists are studying WILD animals...lol

a link to the book I was talking about

2010-05-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

I wanted to offer the link to the book by the woman who escaped from the flds cult and experienced a lot of horrifying abuse, all the while being pressured to "Keep Nice", which was more important to the cult members, apparently, than even following God.

Here's the link, in case you're just wondering. What a woman of courage! She has a sequel about her life after her escape:

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Carolyn-Jessop/dp/0767927575/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

It's a harrowing story, though.

I read a LOT of nonfiction about all kinds of subjects...not just about animals. Human behavior is as interesting to me, almost, as animal behavior.

Anyway, thought you might wanna know about it.

Making changes

2010-05-07T05:55:00.001-07:00

WOW! I am so impressed! I think this is really going to happen!

I, too, realize that right now the wildlife agencies are completely overwhelmed with the Gulf disaster. That is so huge that it's hard to even grasp.

But it gives us time to get our act together anyway.

So far, we have collected some websites/links and I wanted to post them:

http://www.fgc.ca.gov/regulations/process/regulatoryprocess.pdf

I also like the idea of reaching out to the National Audubon Society. It probably wouldn't hurt to see if anyone at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has considered or wants to consider getting involved in getting information out there at the very least.

I, too, am hopeless at facebook.

There are yahoo groups, I hear, that form to discuss certain issues and share information. Maybe someone could set up an owlbox regulation yahoo group? I don't know how to do that. Anyone know how and want to go ahead and set that up?

We CAN change the way barn owls are lured into these deathtraps and turn it into a lovely system where they branch, fledge, and go out into the world with every chance of success! Isn't that what we want for all those we love?

And do we not love these wonderful little souls with all our hearts? yes we do!

It's like when a mother protects her children. We are stewards of the animals and the earth, so we are the ones to be their voice, their advocate, their protector, their steward.

If the mother and father owl are so willing to sit on eggs for ages, hunt their hearts out all night, carefully feed chunks to each little hungry beak, keep the babies warm, and basically pour their entire being into the welfare of these amazing little personalities we've come to know and love, then we can certainly help them see the babies through to a happy ending! When I see how earnest and dedicated the owls THEMSELVES are to the babies, I feel that the least I can do is speak up for them when they're in a helpless situation that's over their head.

I can't tell you how thrilled I am that you are stepping up! You don't have to have "leadership" skills to make a difference! All you have to do is collect the information as to who to contact and how to go about making changes.

From there, I'm happy to be one of the writers of the letters we would send to such organizations, to bring them up to speed on the problem, and to ask for action to be taken to change this situation by putting regulations into place for the long term safety of all barn owls who are lured to nest boxes.

We can make all the difference for thousands of future Max, Pattison, Austin, and Wesleys, bless their soft little pink feet and warm smooth beaks and big black innocent eyes!

Oh how I love them and what joy it would be to help them live free! Thank you SO MUCH, those of you willing to be involved in the effort to see the through into adulthood without the tragic consequences!

Hooray for the citizens who, when they see a heartbreaking need like this one, are willing to educate lawmakers and regulators so that changes can be made! This is what makes America great - our ability to change and learn through the "ordinary" citizens of our country.

I'm so inspired by you all!

Sincerely,
Stacey

Nancy Conney at Skyhunters.org

2010-05-06T10:57:00.001-07:00

I wanted to give Nancy Conney's number and info to the person who wants to put the information into one place, or one document, or start collecting it and sending it to me to post....but I don't want her to be overwhelmed either...

she takes care of hundreds, probably thousands of every imagineable species of hawk, owl, eagle, and falcon almost singlehandedly, AND goes out and does educational talks something like 300 days out of the year. Her kitchen always has piles of defrosting rats and mice in the sink, and she's always nurturing a critical case, like an electrocuted eagle or an owl on the edge of dying of starvation that has to be fed through a tube cuz he's too weak to swallow at first..that kind of time intensive activity.

But, she IS on the board for the California wildlife rehabbers association, whatever it's called, so she knows EVERYBODY from the federal wildlife agents to the people who issue permits to the lawmakers.

She's not an internet person - she doesn't have time, and when I went to Julian I discovered how very difficult it is for people up in her area to even get a decent internet connection. EG. I stayed in a lodge that advertised WiFi. They didn't have it. I was on vacation and resting so it didn't bother me, but I was curious so I asked why they don't have it. They said, "Because the neighbor turned his off". hahaha! I couldn't quite get across to them that they would have to buy their OWN wifi and connection...

I was later told, that in Julian, there's a certain business that leaves its wi fi on after closing, and that the parking lot fills up w/ people w/ laptops using this business' wifi to go read their email! hahaha!

Seriously!

And people also sit in the library parking lot w/ their laptops, feeding off of the library's wifi.

So...up in the mountains where you've got go have your own tank of gas filled every couple of weeks to run your stove and washer/dryer, a fast internet connection is a rarity. For whatever reason. Even cellphones don't work up there.

I mean, you have to get satellite internet or something like that....and it's expensive...compared to where I live. Here, I can just connect to my television cable for a fast wideband for a few more dollars per month. Some things are just that way.

So...I think skyhunters.org is the place to get the info as to who to start lobbying for changes in regulations. I do think it can be done!

I never dreamed in a million years that I'd be doing this! I didn't really even know about the problem until wildlife people started telling me their tale of woe about these boxes. I, too, thought they might be ok.

See, I've only ever studied WILD OWLS in WILD NESTS, and have not studied owls in an owl box before. lol!!

and in Wild Nests, this problem is nonexistent.

I'm learning along w/ the everyone else about the racket that's been going on concerning these boxes.

As for "nice". I read the autobiography of a woman who escaped from horrendous abuse and a kind of slavery in one of the most extreme FLDS communities, where everyone from judges to the cops on down were in collusion to marry off 11 and 12 year old girls to old geezers who said it was the "will of god". And, within these multiple wife situations, her "husband" baited each wife against the other, and when one wife was mad at the other, she would beat that wife's CHILDREN mercilessly and at times almost to the point of death, and the mother could do nothing about it.

The worst thing a woman could do was to fail to be "nice". "Niceness" was the key word used to mean, "You cannot speak up for what's right, nor can you defend your children, because you are not coming off as sweet and nice."

That book was an eye opener, I tell you!

They used phrases like "Make sweet" to describe how the woman or girl was supposed to smile through every kind of torturous abuse you can think about, which I won't describe here. And it's amazing that this was the most common accusation lobbed at a woman - that she wasn't being "nice".

Ok I've belabored the point. It just has struck me lately for some reason.

But there are times when, if nice means agreeing with everything and going along with everything, we can't do that. How did we even become a country? Someone had to stand up against the crown. I'm sure there were people who said, "don't make trouble. Just keep your head down." What about the civil rights movement? The movement that stopped child labor in this country - the sweatshops where children were treated like slaves? What about the antislavery movement? The right for women to vote movement. I'm sure those ladies were talked down to and berated and told to just shut up and be happy and nice about it all. I don't mean people have to be ugly but I disagree that people have to always just go along with the way things are.

Real progress happens when people see a problem and fix it. Amen to progress!

Love,
Stacey

response to comments/ideas on earlier posts

2010-05-06T04:17:00.000-07:00

Few things are as wondrous and also entertaining as watching baby owls come into their own, with all the flapping and climbing and little flights..watching them learn to use their wings properly through trial and error. It's one of the best "shows" in all of nature. And their personalities really come out during this process, too.

That was what I had hoped for when I was suggesting improvements and trying to prevent an outcome that would have ruined everyone's "enjoyment of the owls" for sure! I wanted us to CONTINUE to enjoy the owls in a way that I know is precious and unforgettable.

There is a chance that the improvements put in place will be used and that the owlets will somehow adapt to it. Like I said in an earlier post, it beats the heck out of what was there before. But it's not ideal by any means.

I am still hoping for a great outcome for these owlets because I have personally fallen in love with them.

So, by trying to explain how to set it up so that we would all have this happy experience, which I have had numerous times, of joyfully watching the branching and fledging of learning to fly, I was hit with all kinds of accusations. One person even said I was "ruining her happy place".

In my mind, it would really ruin her happy place if the owlets' lives ended on the ground below the box. What then of her happy place?

So it was with genuine love and the hope that we could all participate in the most fun part of watching an owlet grow up, that I began to explain what needed to be done to ensure that.

If you've read my book about my life w/ Wesley, you know that the period of time when he was experimenting w/ his wings was one of the most entertaining parts of our time together and that Wendy and I had to run into the bathroom and explode in gales of laughter on a regular basis because he was so cute and so sincere and so comical (he did not brook being laughed at so we had to laugh away from him).

Ah well. And now here we are! Life is complicated.

ivorybill was right in pointing out that I have a severe chronic illness that prevents me from branching out much more in what I'm able to do. As it is, I only have about 4-6 hours of wakefullness per day, having had strokes and comas and a continuous migraine for almost 13 years. So it's with great effort that I write, answer questions, maintain the blog, and do occasional speaking engagements (eg. for ea speaking engagement, I have to stay for at least 2 nights in the hotel, take multiple naps, then sleep almost continually for nearly a week before and after the event).

So, for now, a research project about who to contact and how to go about this might be out of my reach.

I will, however, mull over the idea of what could be said in a letter and try to do the writing part as best I can.

I think we can start with how they've done things in England and go from there.

Also, someone who wants to run with this might contact Nancy Conney and ask her where to start and what to say and how to put together an excellent branching system.

I think the boxes that are already online, the ones w/ the 8-10 inch deep entrance, are a good start, and there is a box design somewhere that has a sort of entry where the owl goes into a little hallway first, then turns into the main room of the box. This prevents weather from blowing directly into the living area and keeps the owlets far from the door.

The box must be bigger than the ones we're seeing in San Diego. Ideally the owlets should be able to fully stretch AND FLAP their wings a lot while still in the box, to gain strength in their wings.

I will try to come up with a standardized way of explaining this and some resources.

But I don't even run my own website. Wendy does. I just don't have the physical capacity to do all that. I am technically disabled but don't like to label myself that....

There are many others, though, who do have the energy and time to do the research needed and I hope someone will rise to the occasion and take that on, and will decide that this is a project they'd like to take on and run with.

Let's not agitate on the new site. Let's agitate the Dept of Fish and Game to do something about ALL owl boxes

2010-05-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

I hear that some of us who are passionate have been 'messing up' the new chatroom w/ discussions about branching and perches. I think it's sad that people "just want to enjoy the owls" but don't want to help them. So they want what they want but don't care what happens to the owls and all the other owls in the same situation?

Ok, well.

Actually, maybe that chat is the wrong place to agitate.

The truth is, the laws won't be changed until we take it to the Dept of Fish and Game and ask THEM how to put into place regulations on how owl boxes are built. Maybe we need to have an approved system like they do in England, and enforcement of that system.

It sure would take a huge burden off of wildlife centers, who labor over sometimes HUNDREDS of fallen baby barn owls, housing, feeding, teaching them to be wild, teaching them to fly, exercising them in huge flight cages....

And it would be such a relief of the collective agony and pain of the little innocent ones who are never found and taken to shelter.

Really, it's the Dept of Fish and Game that can tell us how to start the ball rolling.

This is a nationwide problem, after all, not just in San Diego.

The light has been shined on the problem, now we know what needs to be done, and now we need to figure out how to fix it and people need to decide if they want to take this project/campaign on and literally lick stamps and write letters to congress and Federal Fish and Wildlife and State Fish and Game...etc.

I think the chats are so much the wild west that we've done all we can with raising conciousness and now it's time for someone w/ more energy than I have to take it to the next level.

It doesn't take a degree in biology to figure out what needs to be done now, and anyone w/ the time and energy can do this...

I can write. That's what I do. But there are other people the time and energy to do that other part that needs doing now.

I wonder if we could find out from "England" more about how they went about this.

What do YOU think?

-Stacey

(hoping to hear from you guys, ideas, thoughts, etc.)

PS: Yes, I'm being attacked. But I've answered that attack, so I'm done responding to it. It's more useful to move on and do the right thing for owls. That's what we've learned to love, the owls themselves. That's the gift that's been given to all of us - the passionate love of these innocent, sweet, sassy, wild hearted souls.

Great stuff happening!

2010-05-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

I just want to tell you guys about two new books, just released, that are GREAT!

I read both of them when they were "galley manuscripts". What authors do, is when their book is almost complete, nearly done w editing, the publisher has a bunch printed up and they send them to other authors, who critique it and give comments, to help the author and publisher to see if it's great, needs work, whatever. These two books were sent to me, and I get a steady diet of great books to read this way...but these two really were page turners for me.

They are both informative, hilarious, full of great stories, deeply spiritual, passionate, and written by people who have dedicated their lives to the wild ones and to understanding our fellow creatures.

Both are recently released so you might not know about them yet...in fact the second one was released YESTERDAY and people are just starting to get theirs in the mail.

Drum roll.

They are:

Birdology by Sy Montgomery (she is currently on a whirlwind booktour and might be even speaking in your city soon)

An Eagle Named Freedom By Jeff Guidry

I have read and re-read both books several times just because I so enjoyed them. If you liked Wesley the Owl, I think you'll like these two books as well.

Stacey :-)

I've moved to a new chatroom, which is neutral

2010-05-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

Here is where I'm going: If you wanna join me there:

http://www.sportsmansparadiseonline.com/Live_Owl_Nest_Box_Cam.html

See you in a happier place!

Stacey ;-)

I HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM THE MOLLY OWL BOX FOR SPEAKING MY MIND AND SAYING THAT SCIENTIST DO WORK WITH WILD OWLS!!!!!

2010-05-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

I can NOT believe it. I have heard about this but really didn't believe it.

I finally spoke up about Carlos constantly saying I and other scientists have never worked w/ wild owls - to rooms full of schoolchildren, no less.

So I said something about it last night when there were less than 100 people logged in.

And, sure enough, I HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM THE CHAT ROOM!

Baby wesley in the box, the WA trip, organizations to donate to

2010-05-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

I don't know what's going on with this little one. I would be surprised to see him die of malnutrition, although since Molly is not staying in w the babies (I've been off the internet for a week or so. I assume she's not in there making sure Wesley gets fed anymore? Is that true?), then he is reduced to tussling w/ his larger siblings over each food item that's dropped. It's in this situation that the littlest often loses the battle.

On the other hand, it could be the heat. Were the owlets panting? If they were NOT panting (and by the way, I personally use all caps for emphasis because I can't get the italics to work. I don't use them as a means of yelling..)..

If they were NOT panting, then it had nothing to do with heat. Plus, 80 degrees really isn't too hot for owlets. Even THAT I don't know about because I was on a plane, but the pilot kept saying it was 80 degrees along the coast. Seriously?

When he said that, the whole plane full of Northwesterners groaned and moaned and said, "No that has to be wrong! It can't BEEE!"
hah

Anyway.

The federal wildlife protection people will not go into a nest to take out a baby that's dying, I think. Also, Skyhunters (By that I mean Nancy Conney) does not go on the internet. Some of the people she works with probably do go on the internet but she herself does not so asking her to look at an owl on an internet camera is not going to get you anywhere.

Of course, Skyhunters is part of a network of professionals all over San Diego, so her person in San Marcos may be able to look in on the internet.

But they don't go roaring in to rescue owls in nestboxes.

Now, if an owlet FALLS, they can come in and assess it for injuries and if it's not at all injured, put it back up in the box.

They can also advise a homeowner or landowner as to how to set things up for a successful branching and fledging for the owlets.

They aren't all powerful and they don't just go blasting in unless there's a need to do so.

Because of no regulation on owlboxes, their hands are tied when it comes to these bogus owlboxes w/ no fledging/branching systems. BUT, those tied hands are wringing and those teeth are grinding and they are agonizing over the box situation in general.

The fact that Carlos has done something to at least give the owlets a chance is a heck of a lot more than anyone else in that area has done w/ their owlbox, as far as I can see.

There are a few that have been installed in trees when the homeowner had a large tree, and one I heard of that was even set up between branches on a series of chains to discourage raccoons, though I don't know why a raccoon could not go across a chain. But there is no rule saying you must make it raccoon proof because trees are the natural habitat of owls and raccoons can climb trees. So THAT, for once, IS nature.

OK, so what CAN a wildlife professional do?

They can come in if they are asked to do so, when an owlet is downed, and take it to a rehab center. They're not like these ASPCA cops you see on Animal Planet - they don't go around arresting people for stuff, unless the people are trying to keep a wild one as a pet w/o a permit, or are harassing or messing w/ a protected species.

But an owlbox? No they don't go in unless asked.

NOW...I tend to assume that if an owlet fell and was injured, the Royals WOULD call a wildlife professional.

In fact, if that happened and they did call someone, they could possibly put a camera in the wildlife rehab center to follow the rehabilitation of that one little guy until he's released. Most owlets that come in are releasable, by the way. It's only permanent injuries that deem an animal unreleasable, or if they're hopelessly imprinted on humans.

((Ya know....of course I hope these precious babies branch and fledge flawlessly. But why doesn't a rehab center put a webcam on a baby barn owl who's being rehabbed for release into the wild? Probably because most wildlife centers are so slammed that they can barely keep up, and they don't have the time to even deal w/ a webcam. But it would be BRILLIANT to be able to show people the process! Wow!))

This is why we need the laws changed. We need someone who has the time and energy, to pull together an organization to change the laws governing the putting up of "habitats" for owls and other birds, with actual official plans that have been approved and designed by.....wait for it.....SCIENTISTS (or wildlife experts of other kinds)...with branching systems for owls who BRANCH rather than FLEDGE.

In England, they use the correct word for what owls do. They BRANCH.

Fledging is really what songbirds do - "float" to the ground and hide in a bush and the parents feed them and they slowly learn to fly FROM THE GROUND.

But as you know, Owlets BRANCH, and then it takes a lot of time for them to actually learn to fly. They must be able to hold on to something and beat their wings a lot to gain strength before they can even begin to start to fly-hop and then fly.

So...actually....this conglomerate of people who have all united because of Molly is the perfect network of people to start a campaign to change the law and create official regulations on owlboxes so that we can treat our brothers of the feather more decently when we lure them to what seems to them a perfect nesting spot, only for it to turn into a house of horrors.

Anyone?

I urge you to think about it. If you're an empty nester and you are passionate about this, why not start a foundation or group to start putting the word out to legislatures and the Dept. Of Fish and Game to do something about these owlboxes?

It CAN be done.

Here's an example:
---------------
In San Diego county, they are going around to every single live wire spot and capping it, just to protect raptors who sit on those spots and get electrocuted. It's costing SDG&E to do it, but they are doing it!

Nancy Conney is one of the main people out there doing this, but it's an SDG&E project. So someone, obviously, agitated and educated this massive corporation to fix the problem of electrocuting raptors and owls.

I've seen these survivors of these horrible electrocutions. I know a red tailed hawk who got electrocuted from the tip of one wing across to the tip of the other wing. Now, one of her wings grows these very weird feather shafts that are way too fat and short, then they fall off, having never produced a real feather. Many of these raptors die or have to have a wing amputated.

But the good news is that even though this has been going on for decades, SOMEONE went out and made it their mission to get the power company to do something about it and they ARE! It's a miracle in these days of greedy corporations, I think.

So in the same way, I think Fish and Game could be lobbied to change the laws for owlboxes to require a professionally (and by professional, I mean wildlife biologist or raptor expert such as Nancy Conney) approved design and setup.

And I think Carlos is a groundbreaking homeowner in the sense that he has at least TRIED to put something around for the owlets to land on.

I saw an owlet looking out last night as if he was looking for something to land on, but there wasn't anything close enough to hop to yet. Maybe there will be in a day or two?

But I was happy to see that the owlet was acting cautious and didn't appear to be wanting to just jump out.

I just met a "jumper" when I was in Washington.

------- the baby owl in Washington----- and the Wildlife Center in Washington ---------

It was the sweetest little barred owlet! SO sweet! oh man.

And they were calling him a "nest jumper" because he apparently just jumped out of a nest somewhere. They could not find a nest anywhere though. Maybe he was the last survivor of a nest disaster? Who knows. Sometimes you just don't know the full story of an orphaned owlet.

There were no parents coming to feed him, so he was taken in by the NW Wildlife center (which is a BRILLIANT center. SO awesome). They have the wildlife center inside a big HOUSE! BRILLIANT! It keeps the animals out of the weather, and it's so spotlessly clean that you can't tell, when you walk into the house, that there are animals in it at all! Talk about CLEAN!

I mean, haven't you walked into houses that smelled like cat pee and they only had one cat? Imagine housing possums, birds, turtles, squirrels, rabbits, baby raptors...etc...etc...gophers...and no smell.

Anyway, of course they had the big caging outside for the other stages of rehab, but the babies were all kept in this house on govt land. AND they had people living there 24/7 to care for the animals. They had a room w/ interns living there, getting some experience, working 40 hrs/week. THAT's why it was so clean.

A side note - one of the founders met his wife while volunteering at a wildlife center. Hot tip! If a guy wanted to meet a woman who was strong, a lover of animals, hardworking, dedicated, disciplined, educated....and they were all beautiful...try volunteering at a wildlife center - but ONLY if you are also a lover of animals, big hearted, loving, gentle, dedicated, disciplined...outdoorsy possibly...

And I've always said that the bio department is where you can meet your Indiana Jones. Wanna find the real Indiana Jones? He's in the Biology department, probably as a grad student or post doc. Seriously. Or Indiana Jane.

Sy Montgomery is a perfect example of an Indiana Jane - she goes into jungles that would scare the tar out of just about anyone. One time she was tracking the living dinosaur, the cassowary, and she was walking in shoes that were so full of her own blood they were squishing. And her clothes were soaked w/ her own blood. Why? Well, in Borneo...there are places where if you stand still for a moment, the entire floor of the jungle seems to suddenly move toward you. Why? LEECHES! Millions and millions and millions of leeches burrowing into you everywhere and there's nothing you can do to keep them out.

Did it stop her? NOOooooooo...! She was tracking the cassowary! What do you mean STOP. Sheesh. No WAY!

She's so tiny I don't know how she survived it but she did.

another time she lived among the people in the Sudarbans, where tigers regularly attack and eat people. The people are OK with this, because they have realized that the fact that they have maneating tigers who attack even from underwater and pull people off of BOATS, means they also don't have poachers and loggers.

Isn't that kind of sad? The people are willing to sacrifice themselves because this keeps their habitat from being destroyed. What's a few dead relatives compared to your entire world being ripped apart by greedy corporations and individuals? We don't realize what people are willing to do to keep their habitat from being destroyed until we see an example like this. We don't realize how desperate the situation is until we see something like this. But Sy Montgomery, all 80 pounds of her. decides to go live among the people so she can understand. And she does.

Indiana Jane.

And need I mention Jane Goodall.

So these men and women are just amazing. Raising a barn owl in the comfort of my own home is NOTHING compared to what most biologists are willing to endure for their species. People say I've sacrificed. HA! No way. I haven't sacrificed my life, my health, my sanity, to my species. Many have. Many have disappeared into jungles never to be found. Well not MANY, but some.

So, back to the NW Wildlife center. I suggest you donate to THEM. They are really hurting financially because they're small and they are in a small town, BUT they are surrounded by some of the most amazing habitat and tons and tons of wildlife that needs tending to, and baby season is roaring in.

I've decided that's my mother's day choice for donating in Molly's name - the NorthWest Wildlife Center in Bellingham Washington!!!

Here's another thing that blew me away about the place - the way they tend to not only the physical needs of the animals coming in but the EMOTIONAL NEEDS! HELLO! WOW! Joy!

Dancing in the streets! Shouting w/ Joy! Trumpets! Parades! Someone is actually concerning themselves with the emotional lives of animals in a practical way while rehabilitating them for the wild! What a CONCEPT!

Oh baby we are rocking now!

Example: When I went down to this massive basement where they had rooms for baby owls, we went into a clean, warm room and there was a carrying case w/ a little gray lump of a baby owlet snuggled up to a stuffed animal! How BRILLIANT!

He wasn't screaming in fear because he had no one to snuggle up to, because he was alone. He was relaxed, yawn...and completely attached like velcro to this stuffed animal.

They brought him out, and we kept our voices hushed so as not to scare him or let him get used to humans, and he barely even opened his eyes, he was so relaxed. In fact, I thought he was sick and weak but was later told, no, he's been extremely feisty and energetic so far.

So they brought him out (the guy was wearing a glove, which made me chuckle, since the owlet was so mellow), and they encouraged me to preen him like the mother would.

YES!! THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT!

So I gently preened him, using the tips of my fingers in the exact same motions that the parent uses to preen and gently stimulate the baby's endorphins and relax him. And BOY did he relax. He closed his eyes and leaned into my hand and turned his head this way and that so I could get this spot or that spot, as if he was saying, "Oh...that's the spot. YEAH. that's the spot...now just go a little to the left over here..oh yeah. that's perfect...mmmm....now do my neck...oooh yeah....."

What's funny is that later we were told he was a little demon of a feisty owlet which is why the guy was wearing the glove. A screaming, biting, scratching wild owlet. So again, I had this experience of an owl somehow knowing that I know them. It's a mystery how they know this. So much for us still to learn about these guys and how they think!

There's a spot on owls where there are no feathers growing, along the side of the neck, where the skin feels like silk. Gently rubbing that spot makes them swoon.

I then did his back and under his wings a little and showed the guy there the vestigial gland that in other birds is the uropygial gland. In other birds, it contains oil that is used to condition the feathers and help w/ the waterproofing. In owls, there is no oil, so it's just a vestige.

Humans have similar vestigial parts. For example, nipples in men. They are not neccessary and serve no function, but they are developed in the fetus BEFORE the gender defining organs are developed, so it makes no difference if it's a male or female, in the order of development, they come before gender is defined developmentally.

Side story: I once wrote a long paper about the fetal development of the caudate nucleus in the brain. In those days we didn't have computers to write papers (I date myself, But then again, no one else will so I have to haha). So around colleges were lots and lots of ladies taking in handwritten papers and typing them up for students and making a tidy profit.

So I took my long (110 page) paper to this woman to have it typed up. And I did it very close to the deadline for the paper, of course. So I get it back and in every case, the word "development" was misspelled as "developement". Can you imagine the impression this made on the professor of my DEVELOPMENTAL biology class? yeah. The paper was fine but she was horrified after all. And I didn't have the time and money to have it retyped.....Arg. College!

Anyway, I was so impressed that they encouraged the grooming of this owlet, that they put in a stuffed animal for him to snuggle with. He was so calm compared to other lone owlets in rehab centers.

They had had a barn owlet but they had the good sense to send him to a center that had another lone barn owlet and put them together so they wouldn't be continually freaking out.

you saw how Molly and McGee's babies huddled together whenever Molly left, when they were young. When they're so young, they really need to snuggle with either each other or the mom.

Another example was the possums. They had hammocks for the baby possums to snuggle in. There were a bunch of the cutest tiny furry possums all tangled up together in this lovely hammock (it was a ferret hammock, but don't tell the possums), and they were so content! I reached in and stroked their noses and heads. One lay there and opened his mouth to show me his teeth, but he was so comfortable that he didn't even change position and continued to snuggle w/ his "mates".

So smart.

BTW, possums are gentle souls. They can't move very fast, so they open their mouths to show their teeth, but that's about it. I'm not saying you should stick your hand in and test them, but they are just sweet. I've rescued 3 adults in the field, meaning I had to catch them and put them in a carrier to be taken to a wildlife center, and they all growled and showed teeth but not one of them even attemped to bite me. I wasn't wearing any protective gear at all, not even gloves. Amazing. These were completely wild possums.

I feel sorry for them because they are so easy to pick off for every predator out there and for cars. They just don't move that fast.

If you ever see a dead possum by the side of the road, stop and check for babies. The babies will hang around the dead parent for hours. Check the inside of the pouch. They are marsupials like kangaroos and koala bears, so they keep their young babies in a pouch! If you find babies, put them in a box and take them to a wildlife center and they'll be raised and released in an appropriate place w/ lots of undergrowth to hide in, and nearby water, and lots of snails to eat.

I've seen possums walk along, stop, sniff the air, and go right for a hidden snail. They can smell snails from a distance and ravenously eat them. They also eat fruit, but grapes give them diarrhea...

After I visited the wildlife center, I went to speak at an event at the local library where they also had activities for kids such as dissecting owl pellets and getting an entire skeleton out, then identifying the skeleton w/ a little chart.

They even had cupcakes decorated to look like owls! Make a chocolate cupcake and put opened oreo cookies on the frosting to look like the owl's eyes, and use a piece of licorice to make the beak. They put a piece of round candy in the middle of the oreo halves to look like the pupil of the eye and used licorice to make the great horned owl kind of nose markings that look like a V. You can not do that part and it still looks like an owl. I thought it was very clever and very tasty!

The thing I LOVE about doing events is meeting so many people who are just as passionate about wildlife. People from all walks of life, united in their love for the wild ones.

I always come back very inspired by the people I meet.

The kids and students really inspire me the most. Biology majors, kids who are following their dream. I meet younger kids who are very focused, like I was, and want to be biologists or vets, with supportive parents standing nearby nodding and smiling. What a joy to know that there is a generation of kids taking the torch and wanting to continue the work.

There are a LOT of good, hardworking, nice, polite kids out there. They're not all screaming in the grocery store! haha. If you're single and not around kids a lot, your only experience w/ kids is probably the screaming tantrums at the store, right?

Lucky for me, I'm an auntie of 6 kids, 4 step, and 2 my very own flesh and blood, my sister's kids Michael and Megan.

Yes, I digressed a lot on this post but it's not a book, so I'm not editing my blogs.

I'll edit when I do the book though, so don't lose hope.

----Carlos' legacy and contribution to raising awareness about barn owls ----------------------

And I'm so grateful to have Carlos and his owlbox and all his efforts. I do apologize for letting it get to me about him saying that we scientists have never worked w/ wild owls. in the balance of things, he's doing a great thing for a lot of people and without him doing it,, so many people would not have had the knowledge and experience that they are gaining through this. His extra cameras - that extra effort - makes all the difference in the viewing experience. And having such good sound is absolutely wonderful, since barn owls express themselves so much through vocalization.

People really ARE learning through watching and hearing these owls. I'm amazed at how much people know, who've been watching. I mean, most can even distinguish between Molly and McGee just through their behavior. That's very cool! Who could have done that before all of this? Who knew what the owlet begging sound was, or how they bond as a greeting (the parents)) or how they prefer the head? Or how they swallow their prey whole, or how rowdy it gets in the nest when food is brought, or how they are stepped down in age to ensure the survival of the most aggressive baby if there's not enough food for all?

If you think about what you've learned from this one experience, we should all be grateful above all. Some of my commenters don't like the selling of objects, but you know, other people do. They DO want a souveneer of the experience. I saw quite a few molly t-shirts and I saw the necklace in Julian and it is GORGEOUS.

It's the nicest owl necklace I've ever seen and I've seen a lot, since my grandmother collected them.

So..let the guy sell stuff to the people who want it. And as for his e-book, who wouldn't want that? It's going to be great! I'm going to buy one at least! at LEAST!

And Eric is a bestselling author, so it's going to be well written. This story is a big story and a lot of amazing things have happened.

See...I got good sleep and can see the big picture.

Yes, it upsets me when someone keeps saying that I and other scientists have never worked w /wild owls. Of course it's a slam on my reputation. But....hey, it's the internet...and the overall work he's doing is ultimately good. Because it has allowed people from all over the world to not only observe, but to literally fall in love with barn owls. This is a GOOD THING and will benefit barn owls for years to come, because people now know how passionate and wonderful these mysterious wild ones are, and they know what needs to be done to improve their lives. And a baby owlet falling to the ground is more than just a statistic to people now. It's a real little soul w/ a huge personality, not just a "bird" of some kind and who cares.

This is an intangible thing that Carlos' box and his efforts w/ the cameras and videos have given to us. Let's not lose sight of that.

Also, people keep asking me if the flash is bothering the owls. I don't think it is. It's no different than lightening, which they've been seeing since the beginning of time. So don't worry about that anymore.

------ Wildlife Organizations, and volunteering or getting involved -----possibilities------

Another great thing is that people have become aware of the existence of wildlife rescue and rehab centers. If you live somewhere in the US, there is probably a local wildlife rescue and rehab center that needs volunteers (you will start by cleaning cages and doing laundry. They need to see that you have staying power and are not going to whine that you wanna play w/ the animals. The animals are going to be released, so you can't let them get used to humans. In fact, usually there are curtains on the cages so they don't get used to seeing humans, even). But if you stay long enough and are consistent, they will start to train you to go out and pick up injured animals and/or do the first aid and basic surgery like cleaning wounds and putting in stitches or tube feeding animals that are so weak they can't even swallow for themselves...all that kind of hands on stuff.

No, you do not have to have any particular educational background to do this. You learn on the job. Many places will take kids of about 14 or 16 and on up. Some places will allow a 14 year old to volunteer if they are with a parent and work together. This is a very worthwhile pursuit! Even if you're "just" cleaning cages (which is extremely important work, actually), if you keep your eyes and ears open, you will learn a lot just from watching.

I did that at first at Caltech when I started by just cleaning up after and feeding animals. I had my eyes and ears open and so tuned in that I listened to the advice the professors gave their PhD students and post docs and all the discussions and questions that they asked, I listened and learned and went home and wrote everything down that was said. I soaked up everything I could and never just tuned out and cleaned. No, I was there to learn. If you take that approach, you can really get a lot out of volunteering at your local wildlife center.

They all need things like towels, blankets,...MONEY. Man the food for these animals is expensive. Mice cost at least a dollar apiece! Imagine feeding a hundred owlets every day, or more!

You can donate gifts in kind, put a wildlife center in your will, put them on a life insurance policy, donate regularly, if you have a platform, let them advertise there for donations. They are almost all struggling and barely making it because it's a mostly volunteer effort.

The government does not pay for these wildlife centers! We do. If you are upset about what we've done to our environment and the animals, donate to wildlife rescue and rehab centers, or to activist groups like Defenders of Wildlife (they are trying to stop the wholesale slaughter of the wolf packs, which is being done from helicopters by hunters w/ machine guns. The "hunters" are even using the radio collars that biologists had been using to track the health of the re-introduced wolves, to track them down and slaughter them. Some states even offer a bounty of 150 dollars a paw - ALASKA - and it needs to be stopped. It's no different from the great buffalo slaughter when they shot the buffalo from trains until they all but wiped them out.)

And that's just one organization! The Jane Goodall Institute has chimpanzee rescue and rehab centers all over africa where they take the orphaned chimps that have been ripped from their dead parents arms by poachers who sell these traumatized and dying babies in markets, and sell the dead parents for "bush meat"...the institute gets these babies and brings them to their centers and the volunteers hand raise them. They have a system of letting them grow into adults and joining peer groups and eventually ending up in family bands on protected land. Fenced, but yet close enough to where they are almost living as if they were wild. They also have a worldwide organization for kids to get involved w/ the environment and animals, called Roots and Shoots.

The Gorilla Foundation has bought up a lot of land in Hawaii that's close enough to their original African habitat, and are trying to establish a new territory for them where they won't be wiped out by poachers. They are also the ones w/ Koko the Gorilla, who can now READ ENGLISH and uses flash cards to make sentences to leave messages for her keepers and to have discussions with them. She also signs her name and it looks like a human signature. The great thing about this is that she can now tell us what gorillas think about and how their minds work. AMAZING work being done there.

There's the World Wildlife Federation, through whom I've sponsored a snowy owl and to whom I give. I give to all these organizations.

Last night people asked who I choose to give to. I give a 5 to 10 percent of the book proceeds to wildlife and human organizations. I'll tell you what human ones I give to, also. Here's my personal list:

Since we're going to all give to an organization for Mother's day in Molly Royal's name, I'm giving you my personal list:

humans:
Compassion International
World Vision
St Judes hospital

animals:
Skyhunters (in Alpine, CA: www.skyhunters.org)
WWF (world wildlife federation)
World Wildlife Fund
Jane Goodall Institute
Defenders of Wildlife
Sierra Club
The Nature Conservancy
Friends of the Sea Lion (a marine mammal rescue and rehab center in Orange County , CA.- in Laguna i think) - haven't given to them regularly. Not for any reason, I just keep forgetting. :-(
ASPCA

But please do give to your local wildlife rescue and rehab center if you can. Time, goods, or money are all needed.
And/Or to the organizations involved in saving wildlife in the gulf w/ this massive disaster. God help the people and animals who will be affected for many decades to come because of this horror.

This was more of a CHAPTER than a blog. Thank you for being so patient!

Love and peace,
Stacey

I'll be giving my Molly donation to the Northwest Wildlife Center in Bellingham, Washington

Had a great trip to Washington!

2010-05-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

The wildlife center I toured has a unique approach to caring for the emotional life of the wild ones in their care. I was fascinated by their techniques and will be writing more about it later.

Awesome!

-Stacey

SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH WILD OWLS FOR DECADES

2010-05-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Scientists have been studying wild owls for decades and decades. I have watched close to 100 wild nests personally, as well as doing the immersion study w/ Wesley.

Scientists are so intent upon watching wild creatures that we have created/used submarines and other submersibles to get as deep into the ocean as possible to understand deep ocean organisms. We crawl through jungles and have our feet rot off and get all kinds of tropical diseases just for the pleasure of learning how this or that animal behaves IN THE WILD. We camp for years in snow, rain, hail, wind, extreme heat, just to watch our species of choice 24/7 for days, weeks. months, years. lifetimes.
Lifetimes have been spent watching wild barn owls.

Did you know that?

LIFETIMES!

I just want to point this out once again, which I've done over and over again on the chat.

Thanks!
Stacey

I have not been banned, + posting a comment from a reader

2010-05-01T00:34:00.000-07:00

Rumors of my having been banned, are, at this point in time, totally FALSE. I was on the chat earlier this morning and enjoyed chatting with everyone. Sometimes I end up in overflow, which is also fine. I'm not picky!

Calls for Nancy and me to get involved are appreciated but what are we to do? Nancy is totally inundated with...drum roll....injured baby barn owls...and other spring babies, as are most wildlife people. I am trying to get another book written and also go out on the road..and trying to get the truth about my beloved barn owls out there for the rest of the community to have the knowledge and passion that can ultimately help barn owls.

It's true that unscrupulous people make a living putting up bogus owl boxes, charging people a lot of money for them, and that there is no law, currently, against that. What I hope is that with all the publicity Carlos has helped to give to barn owls both through his awesome views of these owls w/ the better cameras and quality photography, but also through his own experience of having innocently hired an unscrupulous "owl box professional", he is giving everyone a "birds eye view" into the bigger problem of what has been going on in San Diego and other areas for decades. This is the duping of innocent nature lovers who truly want to give a home to owls and enjoy the years of successful raising of babies in a backyard habitat, with the outcome instead being tragedy.

The promise of these "professional owl box people" is "Guaranteed rodent control". But these boxes have been put up in places where there is no hunting grounds such as places like Leisure World, and of course, with no thought to fledging issues or the hot sun. If barn owls do nest there, yes, they will frantically hunt all night for rodents to FEED THEIR BABIES, but the babies will die when they fledge. The owls will keep trying over and over again, yes, controlling rodents by feeding each new clutch of babies, only to have the babies fall to the ground to be eaten by dogs or other predators or die slowly, OR to be rescued and taken to wildlife centers.

I want to emphasize that Carlos is on this road of discovery and is learning all this in real time and it's a lot to take in! I MUST credit him with being possibly the ONLY person I know of who has actually tried to do something about it!!!!

I saw the platform he put up and I must applaud it! It sure beats the heck out of what wasn't there before! And the two ladders might also be possible branching spots, especially if he were to cover one of those slanted ladder 'legs' with astroturf or something the babies could hook their claws into without getting them stuck. Indoor outdoor carpet?

If he were to call Nancy at Skyhunters, I think she'd be happy to help. These people are not hostile to Carlos, they are mad at the people who take advantage of good people like Carlos!

Do you think Carlos intended to have a problematic owl box and then put that out on the ustream for everyone to watch? NO! He did that in all innocence. He wanted to provide genuine habitat for owls and for his grandchildren to be able to enjoy the experience of watching their growth and success.

So I applaud his efforts to give the babies a chance to 'branch' before they 'fledge' This is a UK term, I think, and it's better than trying to describe all the stages of learning to fly as "fledging" as if it were a one time event (the way it is for some birds)..

With that said, I am putting up one of the comments from a reader of the blog. It's true the UK is WAAAAY ahead of us in terms of regulating owl boxes. America is still the "wild west" in so many ways. That's good in one sense - anyone can start up almost any kind of company. But it can be a bad thing when people jump on the "green" or "habitat" or "conservation" bandwagon with disingenuous intent (and I'm NOT talking about Carlos, who I think has good intentions for these owls).

I applaud Carlos for putting up the plaltform for the owls to fledge to, and think that if the ladders were less slippery, they would be part of a good system, too.

I still think Carlos may be well positioned to be THE guy to do the research and come up with a truly useful barn owl box that serves the owls, and to have those installed nationwide rather than these horrible death traps that are being pushed upon the unknowing but trusting public. I hope Carlos will do this and perhaps advocate for a system such as the british owl box system.

There do need to be laws about this. The problem is that wildlife people are not political, usually. They are so inundated w/ the work of saving those they can save. And academics truly want nothing to do w/ "the public", myself being an exception to the rule. I hate the ivory tower mentality.

So....it's up to people like you, dear readers, and Carlos, and all those who've paid good money for a death trap, to unite and make a difference in how this is done nationwide or at least locally.

This is how we grow as a people. We discover that something we're doing isn't so great. Remember, we used to have slavery, child labor, no vote for women....all of those things are now gone because we have slowly realized as a people that they were wrong, and someone went out and did something about it. (We do have unsanctioned slavery and human trafficking, but that's also being brought to the fore and outraged people are doing something about it).

This is what ultimately makes this country great, I think. We do correct what's wrong, we are mostly sincere people trying to do the right thing.

Carlos' story of how all of this came about and he found himself in the middle of a maelstrom of contraversy over these boxes is something he could share and could use to advocate for a groundbreaking and massively new approach with the way owls and even other birds are being exploited by the ignorant and unscrupulous.

If Carlos came up with a better system, or designed boxes based on the british system, HE could have a company that puts in owlboxes that are successful, humane, and good for the owls in the long run. Why couldn't HE be the one w/ a company, one that does it right? He is a businessman after all, and he's also proved to be an excellent communicator.

Anyway, heres' the post from the reader - I do see hope with these new developments!

By the way, please keep putting in your comments! It helps me know what you're all thinking about!

-Stacey

PS: To address the question of why owls would even choose such an unsatisfactory habitat for fledging, we must remember that over the past 150 million years or so, all they had to find was a good hole, up high, with reasonable protection from weather and predators. Those holes were only found in hollow trees which already had branches galore and a trunk for climbing up. So they did not evolve to "look for" branches. They evolved to look for a hole, peer into it, and find a cavity inside. The rest was obvious, since there had been no industrial revolution, no massive development encroaching on their territories, etc. So the owls cannot keep up with what man has done to lure them in. They find a hole, peer in, and WOW there's a nice cavity. Time to make a nest! It would take millions of years, perhaps, for them to 'adapt' to these yucky boxes on poles, and develop a whole new way of learning to fly. At this point, we can't change the owls...

=----------------------------------Comment from a reader of the blog ---------------------

http://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/popup_slide.html?Id=98
http://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/infopage.html?Id=41

Hi Stacey, Its Lynn (lynndw4771). I had these links brought to my attention and this shows pretty much exactly what you've been talking about. That having these owl boxes is not what wild barn owls have been used to and is not their natural habitat by any means... When it comes to fledging, barn owls must first ' branch' which is something that other wild songbirds do not do! I was someone in a chatroom last night say that IF an owlet tumbled out the owl box door, and over the edge, it would be no big deal, because they have the instinct to flap their wings up and down until they come to a soft landing. ( WOW! Are they mis-led by someone!) If everyone could see the 2 sites that I have given you above, they would ( or at least SHOULD) totally understand those that are concerned by this type of a box that is being sold in CA for barn owls.

Again, no one is trying to tear anyone down or make anyone look bad, but just to get info out there to share what is needed when you want the best in safety for these new little owls.

In the UK, they have already gone through THIS stage of 'unfortunate & sad' learning & by that have come up with a design to help them be as safe as if they were in a tree or flat loft where they would have room to branch..hop, flap wings, back and forth til they learn to support their weight, which they don't know how to do when they first start trying it.

You will see in these plans on this link, they tell to have the entrance hole into the nest at least 10 inches, I think it was..or higher from the bottom of the nest, and then some small peg/perch-type protrusions up to the hole , where they learn hopping and flapping their wings INSIDE of the box before they get near an edge that is high up.. IN a tree..if they did it at a place too high for them, the branches underneath them who 'catch' them..not so with an owl box on a pole.

With this design box mentioned in the above link, they would NOT get out of the entrance/exit hole until they had already 'practiced hopping up on small protrusions and flapping wings and back down.. once their wings are stronger, then they can reach the hole to jump out, etc.. ALSO..once they get to THAT point..there needs to be a large enough 'trunk' at ground level, for them to climb back up it to the box to get back in!

Well... watching the links says it all..
and these guys have learned it by the poor owlets that have fallen from the straight pole w/ the hole easy for them to get out of, and then no way to climb back up to the safety of their nest.
Hope this helps in your endeavors and helps those who want to have things done right for these sweet wild creatures.
Lynndw4771

I'm out of town, sorry no blog until tomorrow afternoon..

2010-04-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all!
I'm in a remote location w/ no internet. I came into Julian to quickly write to you all that I've been resting. I had allowed myself to become too exhausted, and as you know, I have to monitor my health very carefully. So I've had no access to the internet and have not followed events.
But I just read some comments and I must say that I've heard many references to how we scientists do not or have not done our work w/ "Wild owls" and that it's somehow groundbreaking to be watching "wild owls".

This is ludicrous and almost does not bear defending. Who thought up the whole idea of putting cameras in the nests of wild owls? Scientists have been doing it since cameras were invented.

And we have been watching wild owls and compiling data and deep understanding for ages and ages.

The problem w/ looking at other owl boxes in San Diego is that there is a group here that makes a huge profit on putting up owl boxes in the most ridiculous places like suburban areas, w/ a "guarantee" that there will be no more rodents. The entire wildlife community has been in an uproar about this for years because it's purely for profit and there is no accountability to the way the owls end up dying in the end when they fledge. By then, the homeowner who had the box "professionally" installed is out their 500 dollars. Or 900 if they had a camera put in.

Just because someone makes a living at putting up owlboxes, does NOT mean they're an expert! Yes the feds are very aware of this and trying to decide what to do. They have not run up against this kind of for profit problem in the past and it's a problem that, believe me, is being hotly discussed behind closed doors among regulators!

in the meantime, Carlos has fallen prey to one of these companies, I'm told by people in the know. And he is in the unique position to remedy the sitaution.

I'm sure that Skyhunters, 619-445-6565 would be happy to help w/ the perch situation. Perches are not TOYS. They are what tree limbs are for. A box on a pole ia not a natural environment and owls are not able to think ahead to the fledging process because it would not be natural to find such perfect nesting spot unless it were in a tree, for the last several million years.

I don't know about the rest cuz I didn't hear what Carlos said so I'll leave that to whoever did hear it.

I'll be back tomorrow w/ a real post. Please make sure to keep agitating for the right thing to be done!
Stacey

The death of 2 of Owlivia's babies

2010-04-23T21:42:00.002-07:00

I am grieving along with everyone else about the death of these two precious little ones. Many people have asked for my opinion and here it is :

It's possible the two littlest ones were not getting enough to eat. Owlivia and Owliver were not bringing in as much prey as Molly and McGee, and they had one more baby to feed. If there isn't quite enough food, the littlest ones do weaken and die. The food is not distributed equally, as the first born and strongest baby is the most aggressive and gets the majority of the food, the second born is the second largest and therefore second most aggressive and gets the second largest portion and on down. If hunting is excellent, they all eat their fill. But if it's not excellent, the smallest and least aggressive babies get the smallest amount to eat, or nothing at all.

Without a necropsy, we won't know what really happened and can only speculate, but this is one of the main possibilities.

The other main possibility is the number one killer of owls, which is rodent poison. People put out poison for rodents, the rodents eat it, and then they go around with the poison in their systems for a little while before they die. During this time they are very easy to catch because of the effect of the poison. They are not surviving and running from predators, they are dying. So they're super attractive to a predator as an easy meal. So the predator catches and eats the poisoned rodent, and feeds it to the babies, and dies. Or the babies die.

It's possible that one of the prey items brought in was carrying poison and that the poison got fed to those two babies. I was worried that if this was the case, all the babies would die or the mother would die...ARG! I didn't sleep well last night. I'm sure a lot of people didn't!

But here we are 24 hours later and no one else has died. This is excellent news!

I'm not in touch w/ the people who have the owlbox, but I heard they were working w/ wildlife experts from project wildlife. If so, maybe they removed the items in the pantry just in case they were poisoned. I don't know.

I don't even know if it was poison.

Still, it really brings the point home about how delicate the food chain is, and how when we mess with it, we affect not just the rodents (in this case) but every animal that might eat that rodent. And this during nesting season, in the spring! It should be against the law.

Maybe this episode has made people more aware of the consequences of putting out poison.

I have friends who live out in the country in a very porous house, who are inundated w/ mice every year. So they put in those mouse traps that catch the mice, flip them unhurt into a holding area, then catch the next mouse, etc. By morning there might be 30 mice in the trap. Then my friends take the trap and drive out further into the country and let the mice go in a field where they can feed the wildlife instead of just dying in their house.

They do this every morning and they feel good about it and there are no poisons in their house.

They also have some excellent mouser cats in the house and barn who thrive on all those mice. It's a win win situation. People have managed to live for thousands of years with mice and have still managed to bring in crops, store crops...mostly...and haven't had to poison the world around them to do so. We can certainly do the same. Or are we more stupid than our ancestors?

I think we're more impatient than our ancestors and have developed a sense of entitlement that says, " I should not have to deal with any inconvenience whatsoever, so if that means poisoning the environment for my immediate gratification, then so be it, because there is nothing in this earth more important than my immediate and personal gratification." haha. I hope we haven't gone that far!

I do passionately hope that this will bring more awareness and help people to care!

In the meantime, I do grieve for those precious baby owls and hope and pray that the rest of the owls we've come to love will thrive in excellent health and go on to live long, happy lives!

Stacey

YES! Carlos is looking into how to put up a fledging area!

2010-04-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

I just read the comment section from the last post, and am told that Carlos' wife, Donna, has been reading the blog! WOW! HI Donna!

And I've been told that Carlos is going to install a perch system for the owlets to fledge to. This would be groundbreaking and might change the way people install owl boxes! I'm thrilled.

I was also given other links to other pictures of the box. It's true there are trees, but they are too low, in my humble opinion.

Here is the link and part of one reader's comments:
------------------
ou can see the layout of the new fence, the owlbox, the nearby tree, and the now 2 ladders (one of which the parent owls are using as a perch) in this video news story by cbs8:

"Owl Cam fans frantic because Molly is Missing"
http://www.cbs8.com/Global/story.asp?S=12338394
If you go forward to time 1:42 of 3:22 in the video - and pause it - you'll get a better sense of the Fledging area. The owlets may enjoy the new fence and the ladders.
-------------------

I do agree that they will probably use the new fence and the ladders in their flight training. But they also need something higher up.

So I'm very glad to hear that Carlos is going to build some fledging areas! This is awesome news! I had no idea they were even reading the blog, but I did know that they are out consulting w/ experts because he said he'd been surveying parks and habitats and working on the idea of putting up boxes all over, to provide homes for not only owls, but other birds. So I figured he'd be on a high learning curve with this, which, by the way, is a lot more than most people would ever do after having an owlbox put up in their yard. I admire Carlos' drive to learn and explore and grow.

As a side effect of this, it keeps a person young to always be involved in new adventures.

I do think that he ought to consult with wildlife experts on this one, since he's going to have to do some constructing while the owls are in the nest.

I know that wildlife people are quite eager to help, and that wildlife centers have a lot of experience constructing their own flight areas. I would urge him to bring in someone like that - who actually has built wildlife center flight cages for rehabilitating baby owls.

I'm picturing a structure, maybe in a sort of triangle, for support, that he could build elsewhere then roll up to the site and slip off of the wheels to leave it there. That way he wouldn't have to be constructing right next to the box.

What I've seen is what I described before, with some 2/4s covered w/ astroturf, parallel to and at the same height as the box opening - right across from the door so they can hop out the door onto the perch, about 3 feet away from the door.

They do also need a piece to climb up for when they take test flights and those flights end on the ground. At first they won't be flying, but will be just hopping w/ lots of flapping. But eventually they'll go on longer flights that end on the ground, and will need to climb back up.

I've seen where people have taken a long tree branch and put that at an angle from ground to perch, and secured to the perch.

I think this structure could be portable yet sturdy if he used a triangular base somehow.

I'm not an architect, nor have I ever built a perching system out in the open. What people in wildlife centers do is run the 2x4s across from wall to wall, so it's easier for them to make the setup.

BUT, I also know people who've been doing this for 25 years or more and would be more than happy to advise him, because truly they are more interested in seeing owls thrive in the wild than they are in having to take in yet another clutch of baby barn owls or any other baby animals.

Baby season is a nightmare in wildlife centers. It SOUNDS fun but it's just so crazy and so frantic that there's no time to enjoy the babies themselves. It's a race for survival that leaves everyone feeling like they've just been in a kind of war zone.

So they would love to see the public getting involved in preventing having to take babies to wildlife centers!

I would bet, though I haven't asked her directly, that the director of Skyhunters would be more than eager to help. She has a network of people all over San Diego, in Valley Center and the areas of N. County, who are long time experts, who know who to go to for solving these construction issues and conundrums. And believe me, everyone who works w/ wild creatures has these kinds of issues to worry about.

How do you enclose coyotes, for example? They'll dig right under a fence. Well, I recently visited a wildlife center in the NW that digss 6 feet down all the way around the fence and sinks a chain link fence 6 feet into the ground, going up to 10 or more above the ground, and bending inward at the top cuz coyotes can even climb some fences.

I'd bet you that the first time wildlife centers started working w/ coyotes, they didnt' know this and had all kinds of premature escapes! So we all learn by doing or by consulting w/ someone else who has learned by doing.

Perhaps this will lead to a new design in owl boxes which includes a branch to fledge to and one to climb up, as one commenter pointed out.

Now, in response to the reader who said I shouldn't talk about "negative" or "upsetting" possiblities, i really do not have a perspective that says, "Oh this is upsetting" Or "this is not upsetting" in the sense that for me, learning and understanding what IS, is what I care about most passionately.

When you're in a biology class, you don't learn only happy thoughts. You are learning about how organisms survive. By what mechanism do they handle the problems that come up, so that they survive to carry on their genes through their progeny?

Those solutions can be physiological: The liver and kidneys and intestines must handle toxins that are the result of metabolism, or the system will poison itself, for example. Do we not discuss the poisonous results of metabolism because it's negative to say that the result of our metabolic process is urea and ammonia and other substances that would be toxic if left to build up in our bloodsream? It has never even crossed my mind that it's negative! It is just what IS. And our bodies are set up to handle those toxins and excrete them. I've taken whole units on how different organisms excrete toxins - from fish and their gills and all those systems, to worms, to every imagineable creature and how he/she handles the toxic output of metabolism.

How does the skeleton balance and handle load? We talk about the forces that the skeleton must be prepared to withstand in terms of pounds per square inch, such as when a large cat leaps down off a tree branch. How do the muscles and skeleton absorb the shock? Do we decide that discussing the "shock" is kinda too tough to talk about?

To me, the miracle is that these problems are solved at all!

And to me, there is no difference between discussing the problems organisms face internally and the issues they must solve externally.

Birds must solve the problem of having to learn to use their wings. And it's a learning process for them. They aren't born knowing how those wings work, and it's very awkward for them to learn. It's especially awkward, in my humble opinion, for owls.

But if you haven't spent your life studying owls or watching them fledge, how would you know the exact mechanism by which they fledge? You wouldn't. You would probably think they fledge just like the sparrows in your backyard, who tumble to the ground unhurt, hide in a bush, and take little hoppy flights along the ground. Sparrows are tiny and light and this works for them.

Owls are awkward during adolescence and they just act more like dinosaurs trying to learn to fly. They don't hop lightly on the ground, they gallumph along on the ground when they're on it. They have big heads and big talons and there's just an awful lot to coordinate.

Once they do figure it out, they are poetry in motion. Absolute beauty and wisdom in the sky.

But they have to get from here to there.

So when I discuss the problems they might face, I really see them not so much as problems, but as challenges. And, since I know how they usually handle those challenges, I would love to see us humans offering them the kind of habitat that allows them to overcome those challenges in the manner to which they've adapted over the millions of years.

So to me, that's a very positive thing. If we come out of this having learned a new way to set up owlboxes in a way that does a lot more to ensure the ultimate success of the clutch, then huge progress has been done.

Carlos may end up being the one who sets up a groudbreaking new approach to owlboxes. Because many companies that put up owlboxes do not do anything to consider the actual owls themselves and how they fledge, etc They just put an owlbox on a stick and leave it at that.

The point made that owls are not adapted to living in owlboxes was well put. They are hardwired to search for nice sized hollow spots, because until recently in history, those spots were in hollow trees.

As we've pointed out before, there are many owl species that do not adapt to change and who are decimated by what we might think of as small changes in their habitat - like the spotted owl. The spotted owl must have a very intricate set of factors, all present together, to survive. Take away one of those factors, and the owl cannot breed or nest. That's why they're so endangered.

But with the lovely barn owl, we do have a good chance to provide them with alternative habitats like the owl boxes, and to ensure a good fledge, so that they will not become endangered as long as there are unpoisoned rodents for them to eat! That's GOOD news, not bad news!

Well, that's it for now. I've got to get ready for tomorrow, when I'm going to meet several of you in Julian! I can't wait to meet you. PLEASE introduce yourselves and tell me you read the blog or that you know me from the owl box so I know who I'm meeting! This will be fun.

I talked to people in Julian today and they said there's snow on the ground but that it has melted enough so that the roads are clear and you don't need chains. I'm taking chains just in case it changes, but they say it's just beautiful up there, but dress warmly. I dress in layers in that kind of cold because I often get too hot indoors when it's cold outside.

See some of you tomorrow!

-Stacey

Why I'm optimistic that Carlos will install a perch for the babies to fledge to...

2010-04-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

Clearly, there is NOTHING for the owlets to jump to. There needs to be a substantial branch within 3 feet of the door of the perch, at the same HEIGHT of the door of the box. This is not the case, yet. Yes, I'm concerned, but I do think Carlos is honestly trying to learn, and that he is becoming educated as he goes along.

It's not Carlos' fault that the box is not installed correctly. He hired a "professional" who should have had the sense to put the box 1) in a tree or at least within the shade of a tree, and 2) in a position such that there are multiple branches parallel to the box's door, for the owls to fly to.

Since Carlos intends to install boxes all over the county in parks and nature areas, he is very interested in learning the right ways to do these things. He just hasn't had the right people involved with putting the box up.

There are people who go into business doing owl boxes as a method of rodent control, who don't know what they're doing, or don't care. I know nothing about the details of how this box got where it got, other than that he did hire a local professional.

But since then, he's been seeking to learn more, so I am very optimistic that he will install some kind of branch, about 3 feet in front of the door, at the same height as the door, very soon. The babies won't fledge until May 14 at the earliest (now watch, I'll be "wrong" and people will say I don't know what I'm doing. haha. Ok so I'll say that in most cases, that would be the target date, but that these guys might fledge early. How's that? lol).

He did say he's been going to parks and looking at other situations. He could go to any raptor center and see the way they put in these perches.

Here's how: They put up a long 2x4 for the owls to land on, wrapped with astroturf (the 2x4, not the owls). They secure the astroturf so it doesn't slide around. This gives the owls a way to grip onto the perch.

He'd have to construct something to hold the perch up and brace it, but I'm sure there are lots of people who know how to do this kind of thing.

He could make a call to skyhunters and ask them to consult, for example. Skyhunters is involved with building flight cages for eagles, even, and with putting caps on live electrical wires all over San Diego, to prevent birds from being electrocuted. I'm sure they could refer him to the right people who'd be very happy to build a proper fledging setup around his box - without even disturbing the owls.

Carlos is good at learning new businesses and skills - if you've looked at his other webpages, he's got amazing photography of butterflies, flowers, cityscapes like towns in England and all over America, he's learned the real estate investment business and has written a book about how to become a millioinaire through real estate, he's a landlord of god knows how many properties, he was in the navy - in other words he's a very well rounded guy who has learned a huge variety of skills, so he can easily learn about owl habitats.

And a proper barn owl habitat includes somewhere to fledge!

This is why I'm optimistic.

We can see from the picture that, right now, there is no adequate place to fly to. The box stands alone far above any trees, and even the trees that are there do not have adequate perching areas.

He will figure all this out. If anyone can figure it out, he can! Everyone has to go through a learning curve in every new area of life. It's normal, and it keeps a person young to keep learning new things. I don't criticize people for not automatically knowing about every possible subject on this earth - it's not possible to do so.

I applaud those who undertake new projects and are open to learning, and who open themselves up to experts and ask questions, who are willing to continue to learn and adapt and grow.

This is one of those situations, and I think Carlos is very serious about learning everything he can about this. So....he will install proper perches, I'm sure, in time for the babies to fledge.

I'm sure he does not want this very public journey to end in disaster, especially with so many schoolchildren inovlved.

I remember a case in which schoolchildren were very involved in watching the rehabilitation of a baby seal who had been found starving on the beach. He was nursed back to health and the kids followed his progress every step of the way.

Finally the big day came for the release of the seal. Some classes actually went out to watch, while others were able to see the action on some kind of closed circuit TV setup. The seal was released with great fanfare. Less than a minute later, a killer whale rose up and ate the seal. What a disaster! Horrors! Those poor kids!

I'm sure Carlos is not going to let something like that happen. He cares about this little owl family just like we all do. One can't help but fall in love with these little characters, and with the beautiful Molly and McGee!

-Stacey

PS: I'm not writing this so that people will become frantic! I'm writing this because I think that, even though the box is not properly installed at the moment, I think it will be remedied well in time for the fledging. So, please refrain from hysteria. I personally doubt that people are that hysterical, but I keep being told that they are and that I should only say happy happy things. I think this IS a happy thing - these owls have so many people who care about their welfare that they can't help but be well accomodated and cared for! So be happy. NOW!...SMILE! or else! ;-)

Is the owl box next to tree branches to which the babies can hop or fly?

2010-04-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of questions about the placement of the owl box, because when the babies start to fledge, they will do so in a process. Owl babies do not fledge all at once as one event the way songbirds do. First, they don't fledge to the ground like songbirds. Instead, they begin to hop from the nest to a nearby branch, then back again, over and over again. They can't fly yet, but they begin to exercise their wings by flapping them very hard while holding tight to a tree branch, and they hop back and forth.

Eventually, this hopping starts to include a little bit of lift, as if flying or gliding, but then there's the safety of nearby tree branches upon which to land. By doing this, they practice using their wings and start to learn what happens when they flap their wings this way or that, or the other way. They learn to stop in midair and float down to to the branch like a hellicopter. They learn to strike the branch w/ their talons. They learn all kinds of landing techniques.

Also, they will exercise their leg and wing muscles by powering up tree trunks, hooking their talons into the bark and flapping hard, using their powerful thigh muscles to literally walk up the tree trunk.

For this reason, it's advised that if you put up an owlbox, you need to put it up next to or even in a tree so that the owlets can fledge properly.

If the owlbox is not set up that way, the babies will fall to the ground when they leave the box, breaking wings and legs. Oh, was I "wrong" to say that? Lest anyone be concerned? Well, I can't lie, can I?

But we have been told that the owl box IS next to a tree and that there ARE branches right next to the box for the owls to jump back and forth to, right parallel with the opening of the box. What a relief.

Well, heck, you be the judge. Above is a picture of the owl box, which I got off of one of Carlos' websites! Let the debate end here!

Sincerely,
Stacey

Were people overreacting when they ask about Wesley's welfare...

2010-04-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the discussion:

Some people have ASKED, "How is Wesley doing?"
Other people think that means they are panicking. Accusing them of thinking that baby Wesley is near death. I don't think that's what they're saying. I think they're asking, "What will this mean, if Molly has left the babies to fend for themselves, eating-wise, when Wesley still can't rip up his food?"

So, I don't think people were saying he was starving - well there were a few who thought that, but the majority of people were wondering about what would happen to him if Molly didn't come back to roost with the babies anymore. It was a valid question! It was the elephant in the room. The reason I called it that is that people seem to be immediately jumped on, as if they've committed a sin by "being negative". It's as if there's a fear of there being anything said that might hint that the outcome would be anything less than disneyesque.

It's kind of hard to explain this but I'll try. When I'm talking about the owls, I'm really looking at it as objectively as I can, comparing what I'm seeing to what I've seen in the many other nests I've observed. I don't pretend to be able to psychically predict every move the owls will make because the truth is that they are all individuals! (I'm not! - That's an obscure reference to The Life of Brian by Monty Python). Anyway...they are not automotons that can be put into little slots so that we know that by day X, the mother will absolutely do Y. The real situation is that by day X, I've seen a good majority of mothers doing Y, but I've also seen mothers who do A, B, and even (oh the shock) C!

So I'll try to answer by saying what I think is "most likely" based on other situations. That's all an ethologist can do.

At least I know I'm in good company. For years and years and years, Jane Goodall thought the chimpanzees were our peaceful ancestors, innocent and devoid of the cruelty and tendency for war that we humans have.

The book in which she discusses the event that changed her mind is called The End of Innocence. She means HER innocence.

After years and years and years of study, she saw a change in the chimp groups. Two groups formed and began to have skirmishes along the borders of their territories. Things escalated, alliances were formed, atrocities were committed that she could never, in her wildest dreams, have imagined. It was a very painful time for her and for the chimps.

Before all of this, she would have answered questions very differently than she did after all of this. I'm NOT comparing myself to Jane Goodall (someone on the chat said, "Stacey compares herself to Jane Goodall". Oh please. I'm not that deluded!), but I can use her experience as an example.

Even though she had more experience w/ chimps than anyone else in the world, years and years and years, she didn't know everything, but she still would have answered questions like, "Do chimps go to war" or "will the chimps form gangs and bully other chimps" or "will chimps kill other chimps just for the fun of killing" - she would have said "absolutely not" to those questions.

All any scientist can do is answer according to what has been discovered or observed up to that point by themselves or their colleagues. And, if there's a reference out there that says X, but the scientist has honestly not seen that to be true, and neither have her colleagues, she cannot just throw that away and say, "oh well then, that reference out there must be more valid than our research" until she has looked into that reference thoroughly and hopefully talked to the scientists who put that reference out there.

I refer you to the head of a large city zoo who is still, to this day, going on talk shows and announcing that owls hunt using echolocation like bats! No matter how many times he says it, it still isn't true. My mentor says, "He's not a scientist, Stacey, why do you even care?" I guess I actually care about the truth, even for NonScientists (as if we were some kind of cult. haha).

So, with all this in mind, when people ask, "What will happen to baby Wesley?" or "Is this premature for the mom to leave before he can rip up his own food?"...well YES, it IS premature. Not but much, mind you, but it's still premature. And the truth is that many of the youngest owls in nests do die, because they are the weakest and least developed. So if mom is timing her moves based on the development of her older owls, the littlest gets left behind and does die. It happens a LOT.

I'm not saying Wesley will die! In fact, as I've said before, he is least likely to die of any youngest owl I've ever seen, because he has a worldwide audience of people who care what happens to him! So...let me modify my statement to say that if he was not so popular, if he was not a celebrity, if he was in an obscure nest out in the wilderness, he might have been too weak to survive if he couldn't rip up his food or get prey small enough to swallow on a pretty regular basis, long enough for him to develop a little more and become strong enough to handle his prey.

That doesn't mean I think he doesn't look too good 10 hours after the mother leaves the nest! They're not THAT delicate after all. i'm talking about long term consequences in a normal wild box. When people ask me questions about owl behavior, I'm trying to answer according to what's most normal or most likely in the owls I/we have observed.

I have observed nests primarily along the foothills of the Angeles Crest range of mountains in California, and owls in and around La Costa, Carlsbad, and Valley Center. I'm sorry, but the nests I've observed just so happened to contain experienced females who stayed with their babies right through fledging. I don't know why that is so. It just IS. Maybe the years when I was owlwatching were excellent years for mice - because I also saw mostly mice being delivered by the male - it is true that in these cases the nest was near a field or fields that were dominated by mice, or a few were near malls or eating establishments that attracted mice during the night who came to eat the crumbs left on the ground by people who ate there during the day. So the owls were eating mice.

Obviously, owls will eat the prey that is available! They are not going to pass up edible prey because studies have said they mostly eat mice! They are going to eat what's available! Owls do not read scientific journals!

Biologists are constantly learning new things - making new discoveries. When a new discovery is made, it is celebrated. The biologist does not spend the time beating themselves up for not having observed that thing before, or for not having known that truth before now! No! They are thrilled to have observed something different! They pass around a bottle of champaigne - well they do at Caltech - and savor the moment! Then they get back to work.

As in all the sciences, biology is a study that follows endlessly branching questions. One question leads to another, which brings up another question, which branches out into a hundred more questions. This is the beauty of it! No one gets bored! I guarantee you that!

They just discovered a new species of deer in the jungles of Vietnam. Are you KIDDING ME? Even after years of war, that species had not been identified! They've found a whole bunch of new creatures in an area where an ice shelf melted. We will always learn new things and be amazed and thrilled.

It isn't wrong to be wrong. A hypothesis is just as important to disprove as to prove, after all.

So, yes, Wesley could be in trouble if his mom were to ignore the babies day after day after day. But she didn't. She went back to brood with them, which might mean that she will still tear up food for little Wesley. Or the parents might so happen to bring in more mice (which is what happened), increasing the chance that our little Wesley will swallow one whole and be very full. Remember, he does not have to eat his fill to survive and continue to grow. He just has to make it for a few more days to catch up with his siblings and he'll be ok.

If my answer to someone's question isn't what they wanted to hear, I cannot modify my answer to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy. I have to answer to the best of my ability with the truth that I know about at the time I answer the question. I may learn something new later on that might change how I would answer that question, but I can only answer to what I know to be true now.

Jane Goodall has certainly changed her answers to questions about brutality and war, and even atrocities, among chimps. She's not ashamed that she didn't know. No one really knew in her case. Her observations changed everything. And she had to change her answers. But she never changed her answers to make people feel good because she is a scientist.

Again, I'm not comparing myself to Jane Goodall. But I DO admire Jane Goodall and learn from her through her example and her writings.

I hope I've cleared a few things up. Whew!

-Stacey

Bellingham, WA Event! Details as promised!

2010-04-21T02:36:00.000-07:00

Here are the contents of the flyer that went out about my event in Bellingham, WA. I hope those of you who are near there can come! Notice that the event on Sunday, May 2 is FREE and does NOT require a reservation! I hope to meet you there! Please bring your books to have me sign, or you can get a book there and have me sign it. Also, make sure you introduce yourself!

I'm looking forward to this!

-Stacey

-----------------------------------
Meet the Author: STACEY O’BRIEN

Northwest Wildlife Rehabilitation Center
is proud to offer

an intimate catered evening lecture and book signing
with “Wesley The Owl” author Stacey O’Brien
Saturday, May 1st from 6-9 pm
Corona Court Clubhouse, 4780 Corona Court, in Bellingham, WA.
$40 per person, space is limited to 50 people
Heavy hors d'oeuvres and wine will be served
Reservations Required: Brian at (360) 220-6234 or bdgenge69@yahoo.com

Then again on Sunday, May 2nd from 2:30–4:30 pm
at Fairhaven Library, 1117 12th Street Bellingham
Slide show and book signing (for adults), plus owl education and crafts for the kids!
No reservations required – this event is free, with an optional $5 donation to benefit NWRC

Wesley the Owl is a love story that begins when a young, compassionate biologist adopts a baby bird-and unknowingly embarks on a relationship that will last almost two decades. Written with the same heartwarming sentiment that made the memoirs Marley and Me and Chosen by a Horse runaway bestsellers, biologist and barn owl expert O'Brien chronicles her rescue of an adorable, abandoned baby barn owl - and their astonishing and unprecedented nineteen-year life together.
By turns playful and informative, Wesley the Owl is a surprising story of a complex non-human being capable of reason, communication, love, and loyalty--it is sure to be cherished by animal lovers everywhere.
STACEY O'BRIEN is a biologist, wildlife rescuer, and animal rehabilitation expert specializing in owl research. She lives in California.
These events are sponsored by Northwest Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
Check us out online at www.northwestwildlife.org.

Additional comments about baby Wesley

2010-04-20T22:44:00.000-07:00

I just want to point out a few addendums to the post below...I did not personally see Wesley take food out of Max's beak. I was told that the picture was of him doing so, but I don't really know. Apparently some people, who I regard as very experienced, only saw them touch beaks, but did not see the transfer of food. So I may be wrong that he got food out of Max. I also saw Wesley struggling mightily to swallow a partial mouse, but he kept trying to swallow from the back, which doesn't work. The feet get in the way and get caught on the sides of the owl's mouth and he can never get the mouse down. And Wesley didn't. He hasn't learned to position the mouse so that he's swallowing it headfirst. It was so frustrating to watch.

So now I'm not so sure that he's going to get enough to eat. But as I said earlier, he will be rescued by the wildlife people if he starts to fail. Keep in mind - these owls belong to the Federal Government, for their own protection, just like the national parks and tidepools. They are not under the jurisdiction of private citizens.

I've also been told by the maker and installer of the box that the tree nearby is inadequate for fledging owlets. This is easily remedied by Carlos putting up a solid landing perch a few feet away from the porch for the babies to fly to, and there's time to put that in. No need to panic here.

Below the posts, I listed some of my favorite animal books for you to consider. Enjoy!

-Stacey

Why Baby Wesley should be ok.

2010-04-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

Molly's littlest owlet is named Wesley, after Carlos' family members and my Wesley. What a coincidence, really.

I had thought that the baby might be able to grab scraps from the beaks of big brothers and sisters once they started ripping up the prey items, and it turns out he's doing just that very thing, with no protest from the siblings. Max seems to be a particularly mellow fellow, and doesn't fuss when little Wesley grabs a bite right out of his beak. While I'd be very surprised if Max were socially developed enough to feel a fatherly or motherly responsibility to feed Wesley (siblings compete for food), he is certainly affectionate and friendly with his siblings, and not overly competitive. I saw Wesley sleeping under Max's wing the other day. Max probably didn't care where Wesley was in the huddle, but the point is that Wesley was able to use MAX as a wing under which to feel safe.

In the same way, although Max may not be purposely feeding Wesley, the fact that he doesn't fight him allows Wesley to go ahead and act as if Max WAS feeding him, and just take the tidbits right out of Max's beak!

I had said that once the prey was "unzipped", Wesley could eat the insides much more easily, or eat a left over portion of bigger prey. Ie. he could swallow a partial gopher whole, once it's been partially eaten.

And finally, he will be ok because if he really were starving and weakening, people would go crazy with worry and the media would get involved and this little owlet would be the champion of a rescue rehab center somewhere, no doubt with his own paparazzi following his recovery, learning to hunt and fly, and finally, his release.

This little guy has no idea how many guardian angels he has! He has it better than any other owlet in the woods, so to speak. Even though they're not in the woods. ;-)

I was pondering today about the frantic worry and near meltdowns people have been having over the fate of these precious owls. Whenever you let your heart out to love someone so much, you are opening your heart to possible pain and disappointment. Does that mean to keep your heart closed? May it never be!

Another possibility is that it's very hard to feel like you cannot control anything about a situation. That's probably why some people are so terrified of flying - it's the not being able to control the situation that really scares them the most, I think. And with these owls, all we feel we can do is watch, and the helplessness of that gets to people.

We also tend to project our own issues onto the owls. If you feel afraid that you can't keep your own children safe from the big bad world, and if they're pulling away from you, becoming more independent, your emotions might be compounded by the situation w/ Molly and the baby Wesley. All your worst fears about your child, which you cannot verbalize, come to the surface and are focused on these owls. Then the emotion rises to the surface and seems overly strong. That's because it's not JUST about the owls. It's about your own feelings of loss of control and fears that you can't protect those you love.

This isn't always true, and I'm certainly not a psychiatrist or psychologist! But for some of us there may be a ring of truth to some of what i'm saying. We all subjugate our feelings to one degree or another just so we can keep producing, working, getting up in the morning and carrying on. Life is scary and if we think too hard about it we might just end up curled in a little ball under the bed crying for our mom, or for God, or for medication. ;-)

So we subjugate our feelings, push them down, and carry on. Then something that's a little safer to worry about comes along. It's safer to worry about these owls than it is to worry that your husband might get in a crash cuz he's driving drunk, or your daughter might get hurt running w/ the wrong crowd, or your kids are doing drugs or endangering themselves, or maybe just going off to college and you can't be there for them to protect them from everything.

Suddenly it's safe to express these emotions if it's about the owls, because it's not quite so close to home.

We even do this with movies - the emotions of the movie act as as catharsis for feelings that were already there for us.

Anyway it's worth pondering. I'm not saying we can't truly care about the owls for the owls' sake! But if we're having meltdowns and really freaking out, it's worth asking ourselves if there's more to it than that.

By saying this I hope I"m not taking away from our love for these owls. I'm not saying we can't possibly love these owls that much, becauase we can. WE have a deep seated desire to care for the animals of this planet - to be stewards and protectors of them. We have lost some of this instinct through becoming industrialized and i think some of us are getting back in touch with our role as stewards, rather than conquerors, of nature And that's a GOOD THING!

-Stacey

Here's a pic of Wesley taking food out of Max's beak today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyanet131/4538309455/

A list of my current favorite books, as promised

2010-04-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

This is not a complete list of my favorite books, but they are the ones that come to mind right now:
After you've read, Wesley the Owl, you might want to read more about animals from the point of view of an ethologist, biologist, or naturalist. Here are some of my all time favorites:

In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall - this is her first book and the best one to get yourself introduced to her life among the chimps. After that, there are many other books of hers to enjoy. I particularly like her two volumes of letters home about her life w/ the chimpanzees of Gombe, starting with
Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters: The Early Years

Never Cry Wolf - by Farley Mowat: He lived smack in the middle of a wolf pack for a year and a half, even eating a diet of mice to prove that a large mammal could do this. The wolves were living primarily off of mice, only occasionally hunting for caribou. A classic!

The Good Good Pig - by S y Montgomery. Great! She raised a pig for 14 years and had a marvelous relationship with him. Then read her other amazing books. (Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans; Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest ; and many others from a female Indiana Jones crossed with Jane Goodall!)

Birdology: Adventures with a Pack of Hens, a Peck of Pigeons, Cantankerous Crows, Fierce Falcons, Hip Hop Parrots, Baby Hummingbirds, and One Murderously Big Living Dinosaur - by Sy Montgomery: Just out! I'm reading it now. Fantastic book!

An Eagle Named Freedom: My True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Jeff Guidry (in pre-order on Amazon, out May 4. Similar to my story of Wesley and me and our relationship).

The Mind of the Raven - by Berndt Heinrich: Amazing! About how ravens think, plan, make tools...readable too!
One Man's Owl - also Berndt Heinrich ( I didn't allow myself to read it until after I finished writing Wesley the Owl so I wouldn't inadvertantly quote him or anything).

Marc Bekoff's books. Hard to pick a favorite, but I think in this case, read WILD JUSTICE: REFLECTIONS ON EMPATHY, FAIR PLAY, AND MORALITY IN ANIMALS. Marc gets it. He's cofounder of the Jane Goodall Institute and has spent many years studying coyotes at Colorado University in Boulder.

Lynne Cox - Grayson: Lynne is a coldwater swimmer and one day while out in the ocean she was approached by a lost baby gray whale looking for his mom. She helps him find her! AMazing!

Illumination in the Flatwoods: A Season with the Wild Turkey by Joe Hutto

That Quail, Robert by Margaret A. Stanger

Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. Pepperberg
The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots by Irene M. Pepperberg

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog by Ted Kerasote

The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong by Donald E. Kroodsma (goes deeply into bird behavior and bird song)

Chosen by a horse: how a broken horse fixed a broken heart. by Susan Richards

Hawk Hill by Suzie Gilbert and Sylvia Long

--------------
Want something a little more hard core and scientific? Papers/essays by cognitive ethologists and other behavioral biology types: Try this: Animal Cognition in Nature: The Convergence of Psychology and Biology in Laboratory and Field (Hardcover)
~ R. P. Balda (Editor), I. M. Pepperberg (Editor), A. C. Kamil

Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior by Sara J. Shettleworth

Well, these ought to get you started after you've read Wesley the Owl! There's a ton of amazing stuff and adventure and love in these books!

-Stacey

ps" EVA! I'm translating the blog into Portuguese and Spanish. Do you read Portuguese? It's easier for me to translate into Portuguese which is why I asked...

The Big Molly Scare

2010-04-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

For those who've been following The Owl Box and the plight of Molly and McGee, the owls who nest in the owl box in San Marcos, CA., yesterday was a day of worry. It was a day I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams - a day when the welfare of a barn owl was so important to people that it became the top news story in San DIego.

Having spent most of my adult life with a very obscure obsession - my intense love for barn owls - I thought I was a member of a small group of odd people who knew the great secret. The great secret was that barn owls are individual, fascinating, unpredictable to an extent, expressive, and that they can steal your heart away. This little club of misfits included some scientists, animal rehabbers and rescuers, and some birdwatchers and naturalists.

The rest of the world didn't even seem to see barn owls or care that they existed. This has changed.

The first inkling I had that barn owls were entering the public consciousness was when I went to speak at Book Passages in Marin County, San Francisco. I discovered that the city had a program called "Hungry Owl" (www.hungryowl.org) that provided owl boxes to people who had rodent problems with the promise that those people would not put out poison. Barn owls were now partnering with suburbanites to keep rodents under control, just as they've done for ages with farmers. Wow! But that was just one city.

Having a camera in an owlbox isn't new. My mentor at Caltech spent years studying a wild pair, just like Molly and McGee, and that was many years ago. Scientists have been doing these camera-and-microphone-in-owlbox studies for as long as there have been cameras. And yes, with wild owls, not captive or "chosen" owls.

And people have been putting owlboxes on the internet for years.

But for some reason, this owlbox attracted so many people that it has accumulated over 8 million hits. Not unique hits, but still those are huge numbers.

Everything was going along just fine in the box until yesterday, and all these owl watchers had become lulled into a sense that all would continue to go well. But then Molly seemed to have disappeared into the rain and did not come back to her babies yesterday.

I had seen hints that she was going to be an unusual mother. Owls are individuals, so you can't predict their behavior perfectly. All a person can do is say that it's more likely or less likely for her to do this or that. Molly was proving to be on the "that" end of the spectrum. She was restless. Most mother barn owls stay with their babies almost full time - this has been my experience in observing wild owl nests. They may go out to hunt, but I've seen many where the mother never leaves the babies for any reason until the babies finally leave the mother. Owlivia seems to be more of a normal barn owl mother in that way. But Molly couldn't wait to get back out there, even though it seemed that McGee was providing enough food.

I thought she was premature in leaving them alone in the box at all. And evidence that she was going off and bathing meant she might be taking inordinate risks for a mother with a nest full of babies. If she was bathing on the ground, she was making herself more vulnerable to predators than she ought to. She never got all that wet - just the tips of her outer feathers were soggy, but it was worrisome to me. Of course, she could have found a low tree that was being hit by sprinklers but it's not all that likely.

So I was already thinking she should stay with the babies and guard them! That's the barn owl mother's job. That's why she's 1/3 bigger than the male and is more likely to have the darker tummy and face feathers, looking like she's been rolled in dust. She can stay camoflauged and is big enough to defend the babies. Also, the female's personality is often much feistier than the male's, which makes sense if he needs to patiently hunt all night and she needs to be on guard at the nest.

But they do have their own minds and are highly intelligent, which means they will do what they want to do, not what we expect them to do.

I must say that there is literature that says that mother barn owls leave the nest when the babies are still in it, but if this does happen it's usually when the babies are older - when the can all stand up and rip their food into small pieces or easily handle whatever is brought in.

The littlest baby, Wesley, swallowed a mouse the night before Molly went AWOL, and Molly watched him very intently. Some have posited that this was the trigger that caused her to start leaving the nest. Maybe it was. i don't know. We need to be careful about putting cause and effect together when we really have no idea.

So...even with the signs in place that she was unusual, I was not prepared for the email I received yesterday evening from a friend: "Molly hasn't been seen since midnight last night! Everyone is in a panic and the owlbox chatroom is going crazy."

WHAT?
I thought she was probably dead. I hoped that McGee was ok. It occurred to me that they might have shared a meal of poisoned rodent and both died. What would happen to the babies? Should I call my friend at Skyhunters? What was Carlos going to do?

People saw me logged in and peppered me with questions. I first said maybe Molly was dead, but was told that I was upsetting the people and "don't say that". I said she MIGHT be dead. MIGHT BE! I mean, that was obvious, wasn't it? If it wasn't obvious, why was everyone in a tizzy?

But I also said maybe she got wet in the rain and took cover in a palm tree. Palm trees are great refuges from the rain. "But wouldn't she have come back to the babies by now?", people asked. Well...perhaps. Some barn owls will fly around during the day and some won't.

Was she injured on the ground?

I joined the vigil with everyone else. CBS interviewed Carlos and there were media people at his house. The Union Tribune reported on Molly's sudden disappearance.

Then, at around 8 or 8:15, the babies stood up and started their extreme begging and there was chaotic excitement in the nest box. The babies had sensed, probably heard, a parent! And then one of the parents landed on the box. Thank God they weren't abandoned! Who was it? It was McGee. He dippped in and fed them. Well thank God he is feeding them. He flew away and within seconds in came another owl with more food. Was it McGee again or Molly? Carlos was taking pictures from inside his house and he declared it to be Molly!

On the chat room people were crying and yelling "Yay" and "Thank God" - all in text form of course. One woman broke into crying so hard that her husband ran into the room asking what was wrong. Another yelled and woke up her sleeping husband. I was very happy, but hoping that it was really Molly and not McGee coming back, that we had seen.

Then time ticked by and it seemed that McGee was the one coming each time, since the owl or owls did not go into the box, but delivered the food at the door to the babies. What happened to Molly going into the box with her babies?

Little baby Wesley, who can't even stand up yet to hold his food down w/ his talons so he could rip it into bite sized pieces, got a mouse and tried and tried to position it for swallowing. But he just couldn't. He was too little. He could not manipulate the food And he was so, so hungry, making urgent baby begging sounds. It just killed me when he abandoned the mouse, still hungry and another baby finally ate it. Darn it Molly! You couldn't wait until your youngest was more ready? What was the big hurry?

Maybe she'll come back in and help Wesley eat. If Wesley is lucky, they'll deliver prey small enough for him to eat whole. But they might not! They'll hunt and get whatever they can get.

If she doesn't come back, I remain concerned about the littlest owlet. Maybe after the others have ripped something up, he can then pull some pieces off, but he's awfully weak and small and may not be able to do this. Molly had been doing it for him and feeding him.

So now we wait to see if she'll come in and help him, or if she really thinks they're all just fine without her.

All of this leads me to think that she's a new mother. This, and her behavior when she laid the first egg. She stared at the foreign object, walked around it, stared at it some more. She acted like it was the first time she had seen such a thing.

I'll be back after I see what Molly is doing....

Ok, she's not roosting w/ the babies. Although Wesley is no longer begging, he is continuing to worry the gopher in the back of the nest, and is not developed enough to either rip it apart or swallow it. It's too early for the mom to be out of the nest but they are individuals, not robots. They're not all the best parents, not all the most devoted. There is a range of behavior - this mother is too early, but the babies will PROBABLY survive anyway. The "best" barn owl mothers stay w/ the babies until the babies leave her. I'm a little worried about little Wesley (the youngest baby), but if the others rip the food up during the day, he will most likely get in some bites, or be able to swallow a partial rodent.

The mother does NOT leave the nest to "teach the babies independence". Her leaving the nest has no effect on their sense of independence! Babies from a nest where the mother stays until the end are well taught and just as independent as those who have a mother that leaves the nest when the babies are about 4 weeks old. I prefer that the mother stay with the babies. It's safer for the babies and covers contingencies like a baby not being able to rip up the food.

But these are not robots. They make their own decisions and this mother obviously wanted to spend time away from the babies even a week ago.

It will be interesting to watch.

-Stacey
(This will be translated into Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese later in the day for the foreign language versions of this site)