Why were crows harassing theowlbox, Harassing our dear Molly and McGee? Well, it's a long time tradition. Corvids harass and even sometimes kill hawks, owls, falcons. There are different theories as to why.
There has been a lot of great research on crows and ravens. Their intelligence is astonishing and their behaviors are often not turning out to be what we used to think. For example, people used to think that crows and ravens attacked predators in their territories just to harass them but now it's been discovered that there is much more to it. Believe it or not, many times when you see corvids harassing a predator, the corvid is actually assessing the relative aggressiveness of the predators in their neighborhood, so as to decide whether or not it would be advisable to try to steal the prey of that predator! Who knew that crows were doing profiling to see how safe they'd be stealing from a predator!
They may have been interested in stealing the "food in the pantry", since they steal from predators. They follow predators to see if they kill something and leave any tasty scraps. And they steal from the lair of a predator if possible.
We all do that, don't we? We size each other up to see not whether or not we can get away with stealing from each other (hopefully!), but to try to figure out what we can expect from someone. Is the person especially hostile and aggressive? Then we are especially careful not to upset them. If they seem really relaxed and nice, we may be less on guard.
Same goes for crows. But how do they find out how bad it's going to be when they go after the coyote's kill or try to steal bits of carcass from a hawk's nest? By harassing them ahead of time in a less volatile situation to profile their personalities.
Before scientists were willing to acknowledge that predators HAD different personalities, they could not have seen what was right in front of them, but those days are long gone.
Crows and ravens have amazing intelligence and even MAKE and use tools. Yes, make.
There's one experiment, now famous, where scientists put a test tube in a cage with a treat at the bottom where the raven could not reach it. Then the scientists put a hooked wire and a straight wire in the cage as well. Of course they did not allow the ravens to watch each other solve the problem. Ok, so in comes the first raven. He hardly needs to even look the situation over. He grabs the hooked wire and pulls out the treat. WOW!
So they put another treat in the tube and let another raven in (this bird did not see the first one). But what the scientists hadn't realized is that the first guy flew out holding the hooked wire. The second raven looks over the situation, grabs the straight wire, and without hesitating, bent it to make a hooked end, then pulled out the treat.
And that's just the beginning!
A great book on all of this, quite readable, is "The Mind of the Raven" by Berndt Heinrich. He also had a great horned owlet that he raised for two years while he was living in a very rural area where he could let the owl come and go as it pleased and learn to hunt. When the owl was 2 years old, he (the owl) went wild.
So why do crows mob owls and hawks? Some literature says it's to drive them away from their nests. To me that doesn't explain it thoroughly enough because they seek out the hawks and owls... Are they trying to eliminate the hunters ahead of time? Are they killing their enemies before the enemies can kill them? But owls don't usually go after crows' nests.
I haven't done the research on this. If someone HAS or wants to find the research, please put the info in the comment section. In the meantime, I can only speculate. Hey, I'm a barn owl person, not a corvid expert.
I will put "The Mind of the Raven" on my stack o' urgent books to read again!
I CAN tell you that those of you who witnessed the attack, that you've seen the owl nono's which are so hard to describe and which are really something to see! They mean, "I'm going to rip your face off!" It's the darn cutest way to say, "I'm going to rip your face off" that I've personally ever seen.
-Stacey
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Pics of Wesley bathing, and at different ages on website:
Here's a pic of Wesley diving into the bathtub. You can see a lot more on the website's pictures page:
Sunday, April 11, 2010
My website
HI all!
A lot of you have asked about my website. Here it is:
www.wesleytheowl.com
It has a video of me with Wesley that includes us cuddling and him bonding with me at the end.
It also has the Baby Wesley plushie. The plushie came about when my dear friend, Wendy, who is a professional artist and soft sculpturist, made a life sized Baby Wesley based upon her many years of living w/ Wes and me, including the very first years when I brought him home as a baby. The Baby Wesley she made so captured his essence that I wanted one and my editor wanted one and anyone who saw it wanted one!
But it was a lot of time and work for Wendy to make each one separately, so I urged her to partner with a company and have them mass produced (well, not MASS produced. We had 500 made) as a collectible. So she did. It took several tries for the company to get it right so that it really did capture Wesley's essence, but they finally did get it just right to the point where I am a little startled every time I see it.
And then we made it available on the website so that people could just order it there and Wendy's friend could ship it so that Wendy's house wouldn't be full of Baby Wesleys, ragdoll cats (some 17 or so in the house at times), Colorado mountain dogs, all her artwork, her and her husband's guitars, CDs....it was getting crowded! So she has a friend doing the shipping now.
It all works out pretty well and now people from all over the world can get the Baby Wesley. I sleep with mine and even take it on the road with me. It looks so much like the picture of him at that age that people think the picture of Wesley is a picture of the plushie! Haha.
Anyway, if you want a baby barn owl plushie, check him out at www.wesleytheowl.com
While you're there, check out the photo page and any other pages you might be interested in.
hugs,
Stacey
To bathe or not to bathe; to hunt or not to hunt; these are the questions
Hi All!
I thought I'd clarify a bit about the bathing question and the "will Molly hunt" question:
When I'm answering on the chat, questions are flying by really fast and, as you know, I only have a set number of words to work with to answer, so i can't go into any of the caveats or subtleties in my answer. I just have to give the "most likely" scenario without the exceptions to that "most likely" rule or scenario.
With bathing, when Wesley took an interest in water in 1985, it was possibly the first time a biologist had observed a barn owl deliberatly getting wet, especially getting waterlogged so as to not be able to even BEGIN to think of flying. Wesley was totally helpless and earthbound. Not only that, he was shivering with hypothermia, his down feathers being totally soaked and unable to trap body heat.
Owls are NOT waterproof! This has to do with the way their feathers are set up for completely silent flight. When you hunt by sound, you can't have your own feathers making noise, can you?
Since scientists had not observed owls taking baths in the wild, they figured Wesley's behavior was an amusing anomaly.
Since then, however, many owls and barn owls have been observed approaching water and deliberatly getting wet. These owls were seen to be enjoying it and getting something out of it. Some also were seen sipping the water. Before that, we thought all the water they needed was in their prey, which still may be true. It might just be fun to sip water. We know, now, that animals do things for fun sometimes! ;-)
Most observations of owls in water indicate that they are not allowing themselves to become waterlogged, but are only getting wet on the surface, the way Molly did the other night. If she'd been soaked to the skin, she would not have been able to fly, and would have been vulnerable to predators until she was dry enough to fly. I'm not saying that never happens, just that if it does, it puts the owl in a very dangerous position.
Scientists learn as they build upon the data that comes in from reputable sources - from documented observation. One great thing about the internet, and indeed one of the original reasons for the internet, is the sharing of date, including video like the one we've been seeing with the barn owl waiting until the sprinklers come on and then obviously enjoying the feel of the sprinkles on his/her body. Wesley loved that feeling and would hang upside down on the shower rod while I threw handfuls of water at him so that it felt just like a sprinkler. He'd turn this way and that, making each part of his body available to the water.. The body language of the owl in the video is just like Wesley's when he was getting showered.
When I was at the Aerospace Corporation, the internet (then called Arpanet) had only some 21 sites. All I had to do whenever a new site was added was reprint the one page that had the list on it! The only sites were military and a few educational institutions like Caltech, MIT, Berkeley (where UNIX was developed in part), and Purdue. Others started coming online later, and the big excitement was ftp - the file transfer protocol, which allowed scientists to send each other their data. Then the human genome project was born at some point and the internet had a lot to do with all the file sharing needed for that. Eventually, though, the internet was made available to the public. A concept called "hypercard" which morphed into html, allowed a much better human interface that made it possible to navigate without having to be a programmer of some kind to use the computer!
But I digress. I am amazed at how we can now share such awesome experiences as watching an owl bathe or watching Molly and McGee raise their babies. One of the moderators on theowlbox site shared a stream where I in California could watch a stork in Holland on her nest! wow!
Ok, back to the owls.
The other big question lately is, "Is Molly going out to hunt?" or "Will Molly leave the babies and go hunt if something happens to McGee?"
I have watched a lot of owl nests in the wild and have not seen the mother go out to hunt. But that doesn't mean it doesn't or can't happen. I suspect that most of the nests I've watched have been during a good season with an experienced pair of barn owls. In this case, Molly seems to be a first time mom. And it appears that other scientists have seen the mother go out to hunt, or have assumed she was going out to hunt when she left and came back with food. So I have to say that she may be going out to hunt, or she may be going out and getting prey directly from McGee. The male owl sometimes will cache food outside the nest as well, and maybe she is getting that.
We won't know if this particular female is hunting for sure until we see her in the act of capturing prey for the babies, but there is literature that says the females will go out to hunt for prey..
I have been trying to stay pure to my own actual observations, and to what I've been told at Caltech but that is not the entire body of understanding that's out there. I've always been very cautious to just quote articles because I've seen so much misinformation and assumption. That's why I've been hesitant to try to say she will hunt. But I must conclude that she may very well hunt.
To some people, it might seem silly that I am so cautious not to say something might happen that I've never seen happen, but that's really the standard when a scientist is writing a paper, for example. But I have to then remind myself that I'm not writing a paper about my own observations here, I am trying to answer questions that may include things I've never observed. WHEW!
About the prey McGee is bringing in - this is a perfect picture of how Barn Owls are so adaptive. Although in most studies they rely entirely upon voles and mice for 97% of their diet, they are not going to pass up prey that's already in front of them. If he can catch a baby rabbit, he's not going to say, "no no! I must hold out for a mouse! Even though the babies are hungry, I must only feed them mice, even if I don't see any mice but I see tons of baby rabbits!".
No, he's a survivor and he'll go for the baby rabbits! Another prey item that a lot of California barn owls are seen to be hunting are gophers.
There is such a thing as cultures or differences from one group of birds to another - where they take different prey and even sometimes flocks that have different group attitudes from one group to the other. Owls learn from their parents, so issues like what prey to hunt is taught, and these differences, which can be regional, are handed down from one generation to another.
About being wrong - All scientists can do is tell you what they've observed and what might happen. A great example is the earthquake on Easter morning here on the West coast. Inevitably, the press races to Caltech to ask their experts what's going to happen next, what does this mean, what fault was the earthquake on, what can we expect now?
And the Caltech spokesperson always says that this may be a foreshock to something bigger and it may trigger separate earthquakes as well as aftershocks, which are two different things. And most of the time there is no bigger earthquake, so it was NOT a foreshock to a bigger earthquake. Do we then lambast them and say, "They were wrong! How COULD they! They are not scientists!" No, because they are telling us only that they've observed that sometimes a big quake (or small one) can be a foreshock to a bigger one. It does not mean that this IS a foreshock.
All science can really do is tell us what has been observed so far at this time. The assumptions and even declarations of science change constantly as new data comes in.
For example, the theory of a large extinction of dinosaurs is now changing! A lot of paleontologists are now saying that we were wrong - there was no mass extinction of dinosaurs! They're saying now that dinosaurs are still among us, evolved into birds and reptiles. Of course, there are still those who hold on to the mass extinction theory, and you certainly still see that on TV as being "the truth", but new data says otherwise. So there are now two camps, each of which are adamant that their theory is the correct theory. That happens all the time in science until things finally become more clear with more and more data.
The public is told that 'science' knows it all. But 'science' is nothing more than the observations of people who specialize in observing certain aspects of the world around us. Everyone who observes can contribute to the larger body of knowledge!
So by us observing Molly and McGee, we are doing a lot of what scientist DO and the documentation of every owl box observed contributes to the larger knowledge.
Best of all, by doing what we're doing, we are learning what it's like to DO science. This IS biology, what we're doing. It's not all areas of biology, but it's one area. I love that this is showing kids that it's exciting to do science! It IS exciting. I've had a blast doing this all my adult life and couldn't have asked for a more interesting field to be a part of. Science is NOT boring!
So, MODs, you are becoming obsessed with an area of biology and are not wasting your time. You're also doing what man used to do all the time - being close to nature and connected with nature. This will change us and make us care more about what happens to the habitats of these amazing "others" with whom we share this beautiful green earth!
I thought I'd clarify a bit about the bathing question and the "will Molly hunt" question:
When I'm answering on the chat, questions are flying by really fast and, as you know, I only have a set number of words to work with to answer, so i can't go into any of the caveats or subtleties in my answer. I just have to give the "most likely" scenario without the exceptions to that "most likely" rule or scenario.
With bathing, when Wesley took an interest in water in 1985, it was possibly the first time a biologist had observed a barn owl deliberatly getting wet, especially getting waterlogged so as to not be able to even BEGIN to think of flying. Wesley was totally helpless and earthbound. Not only that, he was shivering with hypothermia, his down feathers being totally soaked and unable to trap body heat.
Owls are NOT waterproof! This has to do with the way their feathers are set up for completely silent flight. When you hunt by sound, you can't have your own feathers making noise, can you?
Since scientists had not observed owls taking baths in the wild, they figured Wesley's behavior was an amusing anomaly.
Since then, however, many owls and barn owls have been observed approaching water and deliberatly getting wet. These owls were seen to be enjoying it and getting something out of it. Some also were seen sipping the water. Before that, we thought all the water they needed was in their prey, which still may be true. It might just be fun to sip water. We know, now, that animals do things for fun sometimes! ;-)
Most observations of owls in water indicate that they are not allowing themselves to become waterlogged, but are only getting wet on the surface, the way Molly did the other night. If she'd been soaked to the skin, she would not have been able to fly, and would have been vulnerable to predators until she was dry enough to fly. I'm not saying that never happens, just that if it does, it puts the owl in a very dangerous position.
Scientists learn as they build upon the data that comes in from reputable sources - from documented observation. One great thing about the internet, and indeed one of the original reasons for the internet, is the sharing of date, including video like the one we've been seeing with the barn owl waiting until the sprinklers come on and then obviously enjoying the feel of the sprinkles on his/her body. Wesley loved that feeling and would hang upside down on the shower rod while I threw handfuls of water at him so that it felt just like a sprinkler. He'd turn this way and that, making each part of his body available to the water.. The body language of the owl in the video is just like Wesley's when he was getting showered.
When I was at the Aerospace Corporation, the internet (then called Arpanet) had only some 21 sites. All I had to do whenever a new site was added was reprint the one page that had the list on it! The only sites were military and a few educational institutions like Caltech, MIT, Berkeley (where UNIX was developed in part), and Purdue. Others started coming online later, and the big excitement was ftp - the file transfer protocol, which allowed scientists to send each other their data. Then the human genome project was born at some point and the internet had a lot to do with all the file sharing needed for that. Eventually, though, the internet was made available to the public. A concept called "hypercard" which morphed into html, allowed a much better human interface that made it possible to navigate without having to be a programmer of some kind to use the computer!
But I digress. I am amazed at how we can now share such awesome experiences as watching an owl bathe or watching Molly and McGee raise their babies. One of the moderators on theowlbox site shared a stream where I in California could watch a stork in Holland on her nest! wow!
Ok, back to the owls.
The other big question lately is, "Is Molly going out to hunt?" or "Will Molly leave the babies and go hunt if something happens to McGee?"
I have watched a lot of owl nests in the wild and have not seen the mother go out to hunt. But that doesn't mean it doesn't or can't happen. I suspect that most of the nests I've watched have been during a good season with an experienced pair of barn owls. In this case, Molly seems to be a first time mom. And it appears that other scientists have seen the mother go out to hunt, or have assumed she was going out to hunt when she left and came back with food. So I have to say that she may be going out to hunt, or she may be going out and getting prey directly from McGee. The male owl sometimes will cache food outside the nest as well, and maybe she is getting that.
We won't know if this particular female is hunting for sure until we see her in the act of capturing prey for the babies, but there is literature that says the females will go out to hunt for prey..
I have been trying to stay pure to my own actual observations, and to what I've been told at Caltech but that is not the entire body of understanding that's out there. I've always been very cautious to just quote articles because I've seen so much misinformation and assumption. That's why I've been hesitant to try to say she will hunt. But I must conclude that she may very well hunt.
To some people, it might seem silly that I am so cautious not to say something might happen that I've never seen happen, but that's really the standard when a scientist is writing a paper, for example. But I have to then remind myself that I'm not writing a paper about my own observations here, I am trying to answer questions that may include things I've never observed. WHEW!
About the prey McGee is bringing in - this is a perfect picture of how Barn Owls are so adaptive. Although in most studies they rely entirely upon voles and mice for 97% of their diet, they are not going to pass up prey that's already in front of them. If he can catch a baby rabbit, he's not going to say, "no no! I must hold out for a mouse! Even though the babies are hungry, I must only feed them mice, even if I don't see any mice but I see tons of baby rabbits!".
No, he's a survivor and he'll go for the baby rabbits! Another prey item that a lot of California barn owls are seen to be hunting are gophers.
There is such a thing as cultures or differences from one group of birds to another - where they take different prey and even sometimes flocks that have different group attitudes from one group to the other. Owls learn from their parents, so issues like what prey to hunt is taught, and these differences, which can be regional, are handed down from one generation to another.
About being wrong - All scientists can do is tell you what they've observed and what might happen. A great example is the earthquake on Easter morning here on the West coast. Inevitably, the press races to Caltech to ask their experts what's going to happen next, what does this mean, what fault was the earthquake on, what can we expect now?
And the Caltech spokesperson always says that this may be a foreshock to something bigger and it may trigger separate earthquakes as well as aftershocks, which are two different things. And most of the time there is no bigger earthquake, so it was NOT a foreshock to a bigger earthquake. Do we then lambast them and say, "They were wrong! How COULD they! They are not scientists!" No, because they are telling us only that they've observed that sometimes a big quake (or small one) can be a foreshock to a bigger one. It does not mean that this IS a foreshock.
All science can really do is tell us what has been observed so far at this time. The assumptions and even declarations of science change constantly as new data comes in.
For example, the theory of a large extinction of dinosaurs is now changing! A lot of paleontologists are now saying that we were wrong - there was no mass extinction of dinosaurs! They're saying now that dinosaurs are still among us, evolved into birds and reptiles. Of course, there are still those who hold on to the mass extinction theory, and you certainly still see that on TV as being "the truth", but new data says otherwise. So there are now two camps, each of which are adamant that their theory is the correct theory. That happens all the time in science until things finally become more clear with more and more data.
The public is told that 'science' knows it all. But 'science' is nothing more than the observations of people who specialize in observing certain aspects of the world around us. Everyone who observes can contribute to the larger body of knowledge!
So by us observing Molly and McGee, we are doing a lot of what scientist DO and the documentation of every owl box observed contributes to the larger knowledge.
Best of all, by doing what we're doing, we are learning what it's like to DO science. This IS biology, what we're doing. It's not all areas of biology, but it's one area. I love that this is showing kids that it's exciting to do science! It IS exciting. I've had a blast doing this all my adult life and couldn't have asked for a more interesting field to be a part of. Science is NOT boring!
So, MODs, you are becoming obsessed with an area of biology and are not wasting your time. You're also doing what man used to do all the time - being close to nature and connected with nature. This will change us and make us care more about what happens to the habitats of these amazing "others" with whom we share this beautiful green earth!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Details about Julian event on April 24th!
I promised I'd post the details of the event in Julian on the 24th:
I"ll be speaking and signing books at the Julian Library in Julian, CA (in the mountains east of San Diego), in the main library, at 1:00pm on the 24th of April, 2010. There will also be a bookstore there selling the books in case you want a personalized, signed book and don't have one.
You can bring books to have them signed, if you want to.
I'm looking forward to meeting you! Julian is a charming gold rush town. It was the site of the only gold rush in Southern California and has a gold mine you can tour, but their main source of income these days are their amazing apple pies. As the laws became more strict about the use of mercury in gold mining and other hazards, the mines closed and the town decided to make their main industry the growing of apples. There are apple farms everywhere, so apple pies are the center of culture there. You can get the best apple pie anywhere in most of the establishments along the main street. There is also great shopping and antiquing in Julian, which has hardly changed since the old west days.
If you go on over the mountains you'll go down the other side into Anza Borrego where the flowers are blooming like crazy in the desert this year due to all the rainfall.
Whenever I go to Julian, I make a day of it, or even a weekend of it. The Julian Hotel was built in the 1870s by a free'd slave and it's hardly changed since. It does have electricity now, but I think it's still heated with wood and has a separate building for the kitchen. There is high tea at 4:00 for tenants. The rooms are charming and victorian. I love to stay there and just relax and read. You can smell the apple pies baking and you hear the clip-clop of horses' hooves going by under your window. There are horse driven carts taking people around on tours of the historic town, which is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it!
I used to take my mom there for long weekends for her birthday every year until her new husband took over birthday duties. We always had a wonderful time.
So, if you want to come, it's about a full hour from San Diego and you can make a day or weekend of it, eat some pie, check out the old soda fountain at the old pharmacy, and enjoy a major change of pace and scenery!
I hope to see you there!
-Stacey
www.wesleytheowl.com
I"ll be speaking and signing books at the Julian Library in Julian, CA (in the mountains east of San Diego), in the main library, at 1:00pm on the 24th of April, 2010. There will also be a bookstore there selling the books in case you want a personalized, signed book and don't have one.
You can bring books to have them signed, if you want to.
I'm looking forward to meeting you! Julian is a charming gold rush town. It was the site of the only gold rush in Southern California and has a gold mine you can tour, but their main source of income these days are their amazing apple pies. As the laws became more strict about the use of mercury in gold mining and other hazards, the mines closed and the town decided to make their main industry the growing of apples. There are apple farms everywhere, so apple pies are the center of culture there. You can get the best apple pie anywhere in most of the establishments along the main street. There is also great shopping and antiquing in Julian, which has hardly changed since the old west days.
If you go on over the mountains you'll go down the other side into Anza Borrego where the flowers are blooming like crazy in the desert this year due to all the rainfall.
Whenever I go to Julian, I make a day of it, or even a weekend of it. The Julian Hotel was built in the 1870s by a free'd slave and it's hardly changed since. It does have electricity now, but I think it's still heated with wood and has a separate building for the kitchen. There is high tea at 4:00 for tenants. The rooms are charming and victorian. I love to stay there and just relax and read. You can smell the apple pies baking and you hear the clip-clop of horses' hooves going by under your window. There are horse driven carts taking people around on tours of the historic town, which is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it!
I used to take my mom there for long weekends for her birthday every year until her new husband took over birthday duties. We always had a wonderful time.
So, if you want to come, it's about a full hour from San Diego and you can make a day or weekend of it, eat some pie, check out the old soda fountain at the old pharmacy, and enjoy a major change of pace and scenery!
I hope to see you there!
-Stacey
www.wesleytheowl.com
Response to comments and questions:
Hi all!
You can definitely use the comment section to ask your questions - I think that's a great method. And remember, there is NO such thing as a stupid question! If we don't ask questions, we never find out the answers, and curiosity is probably the most important attribute for a scientist or naturalist to have - or for anyone to have, for that matter.
Thank you all for your very kind words! Suzie2 - that was very sweet and profound. When I was trying to edit those last 2 chapters, no one could get through it to edit it! I couldn't read it to my writers' group w/o crying, but when we passed it along to have someone else read it, no one could read it w/o crying!
My agent and editor really couldn't do much with it without crying, and I couldn't face it to edit it. As a consequence, it hardly got edited and is pretty much exactly the way I wrote it in my rough draft.. Haha.
I used to think it was terrible that we outlive our animals because of the pain we go through. But with Wesley I changed my mind. I realized that by outliving him I was able to be with him through his hardest time and make sure he was comforted and loved and treated with great gentleness. To make sure he was never handled by strangers and never afraid. The fact that he died cuddling in my arms is such a blessing!
What if he had outlived me? I would not be able to guarantee that he wouldn't end up being manhandled by people who would never understand the depth of Wesley and his innate gentleness. They would interpret his fear as aggression and might be aggressive back to him. He'd be handled by strangers and his final days might be full of terror. So much better for me to be there for him to comfort him. And for that, I'll take the grief of outliving him.
I did have a will and instructions for who would take him if he did outlive me, but it was better the way it was. Now I realize it's not a curse at all to outlive our animals. Painful, yes. But not a bad thing.
On another subject, a lot of people have asked me about how do they sleep standing up and are they really sleeping?
The truth is that owls almost never lie down in their entire lives. Wesley never did unless I was holding him in my arms and he was laid across them w/ his little "landing gear" up. But in the wild he would never have had occasion to lie down.
They are totally comfortable sleeping on one foot. I couldn't figure out how they managed to balance until Wesley came along. Wes allowed me to explore him all over and stick my face into his feathers while he groomed, and because of that I was able to feel under all the feathers when he was sleeping on one leg and i discovered a surprise. Here's how he made a solid platform for sleeping w/ his legs:
His "knees" point backwards, right? So let's say he lifts up his right foot and pulls it up to his stomach. Well, he doesn't have to hold it up there and balance, what he does is cross the right leg at an angle so that the backwards "knee" of his right leg crosses over the bent back left knee and kind of locks into place. Now the two legs are locked together making a sort of platform that he sinks his body into. Between his body holding the legs in that crossed position and the fact that they're sort of locked, he can relax his body and doesn't have to use his muscles to constantly correct for balance. It's a very solid system.
He might sleep casually, sort of dozing, with one foot closed in a fist but touching the ground. That means he's dozing but not committed to really having a long sleep - the way we might doze in front of the TV. The more serious he gets about committing to a real sleep, the more likely it is that he'll raise that leg up into his tummy feathers. So the leg bends and he pulls it up. If he's going to get serious about a good sleep, he fuffs his feathers, crosses his knees in back and tightens the legs, pulling his leg up until the little fist disappears into his tummy feathers and he's sunk his body down onto the leg platform. Now he really closes his eyes and sleeps hard. He dreams.
Sometimes he would screech in his dreams and wake up completely insulted and outraged that whoever had just screeched in his ear had had the gall to wake him up so rudely! He'd look around indignantly for the guilty party, starting at me for a long time to try to assess if I had been the screamer then slowly fall back to sleep.
He slept all day like this with grooming sessions in between. You can bet that McGee is getting some serious shut-eye in a palm tree somewhere.
Barn Owls especially like to nest in palm trees that have not been trimmed. Deep in those leaves are some pretty solid hollow areas. In S. California a lot of Barn owl nests are found in these trees.
They do look for a solid place, which is why they are so often found in abandoned buildings or barns. They also must nest where there are plenty of rodents.
Imagine how overrun we'd be by rodents if there were no owls or hawks or falcons! It would be really bad!
Thanks for the questions and please keep them coming! This is great fun for me to share my passion with you!
-Stacey
www.wesleytheowl.com
You can definitely use the comment section to ask your questions - I think that's a great method. And remember, there is NO such thing as a stupid question! If we don't ask questions, we never find out the answers, and curiosity is probably the most important attribute for a scientist or naturalist to have - or for anyone to have, for that matter.
Thank you all for your very kind words! Suzie2 - that was very sweet and profound. When I was trying to edit those last 2 chapters, no one could get through it to edit it! I couldn't read it to my writers' group w/o crying, but when we passed it along to have someone else read it, no one could read it w/o crying!
My agent and editor really couldn't do much with it without crying, and I couldn't face it to edit it. As a consequence, it hardly got edited and is pretty much exactly the way I wrote it in my rough draft.. Haha.
I used to think it was terrible that we outlive our animals because of the pain we go through. But with Wesley I changed my mind. I realized that by outliving him I was able to be with him through his hardest time and make sure he was comforted and loved and treated with great gentleness. To make sure he was never handled by strangers and never afraid. The fact that he died cuddling in my arms is such a blessing!
What if he had outlived me? I would not be able to guarantee that he wouldn't end up being manhandled by people who would never understand the depth of Wesley and his innate gentleness. They would interpret his fear as aggression and might be aggressive back to him. He'd be handled by strangers and his final days might be full of terror. So much better for me to be there for him to comfort him. And for that, I'll take the grief of outliving him.
I did have a will and instructions for who would take him if he did outlive me, but it was better the way it was. Now I realize it's not a curse at all to outlive our animals. Painful, yes. But not a bad thing.
On another subject, a lot of people have asked me about how do they sleep standing up and are they really sleeping?
The truth is that owls almost never lie down in their entire lives. Wesley never did unless I was holding him in my arms and he was laid across them w/ his little "landing gear" up. But in the wild he would never have had occasion to lie down.
They are totally comfortable sleeping on one foot. I couldn't figure out how they managed to balance until Wesley came along. Wes allowed me to explore him all over and stick my face into his feathers while he groomed, and because of that I was able to feel under all the feathers when he was sleeping on one leg and i discovered a surprise. Here's how he made a solid platform for sleeping w/ his legs:
His "knees" point backwards, right? So let's say he lifts up his right foot and pulls it up to his stomach. Well, he doesn't have to hold it up there and balance, what he does is cross the right leg at an angle so that the backwards "knee" of his right leg crosses over the bent back left knee and kind of locks into place. Now the two legs are locked together making a sort of platform that he sinks his body into. Between his body holding the legs in that crossed position and the fact that they're sort of locked, he can relax his body and doesn't have to use his muscles to constantly correct for balance. It's a very solid system.
He might sleep casually, sort of dozing, with one foot closed in a fist but touching the ground. That means he's dozing but not committed to really having a long sleep - the way we might doze in front of the TV. The more serious he gets about committing to a real sleep, the more likely it is that he'll raise that leg up into his tummy feathers. So the leg bends and he pulls it up. If he's going to get serious about a good sleep, he fuffs his feathers, crosses his knees in back and tightens the legs, pulling his leg up until the little fist disappears into his tummy feathers and he's sunk his body down onto the leg platform. Now he really closes his eyes and sleeps hard. He dreams.
Sometimes he would screech in his dreams and wake up completely insulted and outraged that whoever had just screeched in his ear had had the gall to wake him up so rudely! He'd look around indignantly for the guilty party, starting at me for a long time to try to assess if I had been the screamer then slowly fall back to sleep.
He slept all day like this with grooming sessions in between. You can bet that McGee is getting some serious shut-eye in a palm tree somewhere.
Barn Owls especially like to nest in palm trees that have not been trimmed. Deep in those leaves are some pretty solid hollow areas. In S. California a lot of Barn owl nests are found in these trees.
They do look for a solid place, which is why they are so often found in abandoned buildings or barns. They also must nest where there are plenty of rodents.
Imagine how overrun we'd be by rodents if there were no owls or hawks or falcons! It would be really bad!
Thanks for the questions and please keep them coming! This is great fun for me to share my passion with you!
-Stacey
www.wesleytheowl.com
My publisher, + response to comments
Wow! Thank you! I guess I'll stop worrying about my posts being too long then!
My publisher isn't worried about me "giving too much away"...in fact, I have the best publisher! They are soo in tune with what I'm trying to do and soo passionate about birds! My editor, who is the head editor there, I'm pretty sure, is a passionate birder. And I mean passionate. And she's deeply empathic to all animals. She has Corgis that she teaches to herd sheep and do agility, and she goes on trips all over the world just to see a certain bird.
A perfect example to tell you about is when it was thought that the white billed (crested?) woodpecker had been seen in the woods in or near Arkansas (I'm not looking it up...so I may have the details wrong). My editor is one of the busiest people I know, yet she cancelled everything and took off for these woods where it was 18 degrees most days and the other days it was just cold and muddy. She tromped around in those woods, looking for this woodpecker for 2 or 3 weeks. That was her priority!
She emails me articles about animal intelligence and wild animals, birds, dogs, interspecies cooperation and communication...she's highly educated about all of these issues. She even took the ornithology course at Cornell!
I could never have dreamed of having an editor (and your editor is your "boss" and main contact at the publisher - the one who acquired your book for the company, convinced the company to get behind your book, and shepherded the book through the entire process of getting it ready for publication) who is such an avid naturalist and animal lover.
So she and I are on the same page, so to speak, about the importance of getting the knowledge out there about animals and their consciousness and sentience and intelligence and individuality. What an amazing woman!
She cried when she read the chapter outlines in the book proposal!
When you write a nonfiction book, what you send to publishers is just two sample chapters and then an outline of the book with about a paragraph describing the content of the other chapters. Well, THAT made her cry! She's such an empathetic person.
And when she presented Wesley the Owl to the rest of the company to try to get them on board to agree to take it on, she baked mouse shaped cookies the night before and passed them out at the meeting along with little barn owl plushies!
When I was getting the book ready for print, I was a little hesitant about putting in too much of the science, and she's the one who encouraged me to explain things more, and I'm so glad I did!
She's also very protective of her authors - like mama bear or mama owl for that matter.
I've found that the people in publishing are soo much nicer than the people you encounter in the music business - i mean the people in the big companies like the executives in record companies vs. the executives in publishing. Most of the publishing executives are lovers of books and they tend to be honest and sincere. It's so refreshing after being in showbiz for my entire life until I was about 23.
Every author I know loves their editor and the people they work with at their publishing company and I'm no exception. I adore the people at Free Press and they are sooo supportive it's amazing!
So..there you have it! I thought I'd describe them to you because before i did this I had no idea what publishers were like and thought they were probably like big book factories or something like that. But no, they're passionate about what they do - at least they are at my publisher.
Dunno why I just felt like writing about that today.I've always wanted to express how grateful I am for these wonderful people in my life. You hear that New Yorkers are rude or less friendly but I've found the opposite to be true - they are real kindred spirits! ;-)
-Stacey
My publisher isn't worried about me "giving too much away"...in fact, I have the best publisher! They are soo in tune with what I'm trying to do and soo passionate about birds! My editor, who is the head editor there, I'm pretty sure, is a passionate birder. And I mean passionate. And she's deeply empathic to all animals. She has Corgis that she teaches to herd sheep and do agility, and she goes on trips all over the world just to see a certain bird.
A perfect example to tell you about is when it was thought that the white billed (crested?) woodpecker had been seen in the woods in or near Arkansas (I'm not looking it up...so I may have the details wrong). My editor is one of the busiest people I know, yet she cancelled everything and took off for these woods where it was 18 degrees most days and the other days it was just cold and muddy. She tromped around in those woods, looking for this woodpecker for 2 or 3 weeks. That was her priority!
She emails me articles about animal intelligence and wild animals, birds, dogs, interspecies cooperation and communication...she's highly educated about all of these issues. She even took the ornithology course at Cornell!
I could never have dreamed of having an editor (and your editor is your "boss" and main contact at the publisher - the one who acquired your book for the company, convinced the company to get behind your book, and shepherded the book through the entire process of getting it ready for publication) who is such an avid naturalist and animal lover.
So she and I are on the same page, so to speak, about the importance of getting the knowledge out there about animals and their consciousness and sentience and intelligence and individuality. What an amazing woman!
She cried when she read the chapter outlines in the book proposal!
When you write a nonfiction book, what you send to publishers is just two sample chapters and then an outline of the book with about a paragraph describing the content of the other chapters. Well, THAT made her cry! She's such an empathetic person.
And when she presented Wesley the Owl to the rest of the company to try to get them on board to agree to take it on, she baked mouse shaped cookies the night before and passed them out at the meeting along with little barn owl plushies!
When I was getting the book ready for print, I was a little hesitant about putting in too much of the science, and she's the one who encouraged me to explain things more, and I'm so glad I did!
She's also very protective of her authors - like mama bear or mama owl for that matter.
I've found that the people in publishing are soo much nicer than the people you encounter in the music business - i mean the people in the big companies like the executives in record companies vs. the executives in publishing. Most of the publishing executives are lovers of books and they tend to be honest and sincere. It's so refreshing after being in showbiz for my entire life until I was about 23.
Every author I know loves their editor and the people they work with at their publishing company and I'm no exception. I adore the people at Free Press and they are sooo supportive it's amazing!
So..there you have it! I thought I'd describe them to you because before i did this I had no idea what publishers were like and thought they were probably like big book factories or something like that. But no, they're passionate about what they do - at least they are at my publisher.
Dunno why I just felt like writing about that today.I've always wanted to express how grateful I am for these wonderful people in my life. You hear that New Yorkers are rude or less friendly but I've found the opposite to be true - they are real kindred spirits! ;-)
-Stacey
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