Outdoors

TeReview Wednesday, January 10,1990 — B12

breeds here,

Great horned owl

discovery indicates

HORNED OWL FLEDGLINGS
Cy Hampson photo

Joyce Pendray, West Saanich Road; turned up
great homed owls on the fringe of their property.
The fact that she found a fledgling and managed
to photograph it indicates that the birds had bred
in the vicinity. Taylor lists the great homed ow] as
a fairly rare resident on the Island.

Like saw-whet, boreal, great gray and hawk-
owls, great horned owls are often very easily
approached by humans. Phil Dobson tells me that
a great homed owl recently tured up in their new
mill in Nanaimo. It perched unperturbed and
quite at ease among whirring wheels and fast
running belts, even allowing workers to walk by
within arm’s length. 2

Pendray’s owls probably used the abandoned
nest of a red-tailed hawk for laying eggs and
bringing up chicks. Owls as a group tend to

refrain from building nests of their own. Great
homeds use the old nests of hawks, eagles, crows,
magpies and ospreys; pygmy, boreal, saw-whet
and hawk owls tend to make use of abandoned
woodpecker cavities; snowy and short-eared owls
nest on the ground in natural depressions: burrow-
ing Owls tend to use the dens of badgers and
groundhogs which they share with rattlesnakes
and black widow spiders.

Great horned owls are early nesters, often on

territory in January. On the prairies, I have found

their nests with clutches of eggs in February with
the temperature standing at -15 F Like the

| Short-ear, incubation in the great horned owl

begins with the laying of the first egg, even

i although additional eggs may be laid at about

two-day intervals. As a result, the eggs hatch in
order and the chicks are staggered in age and size.

I am reminded of a hillbilly from the Ozarks
and his wife who had a family of 10 children in a
period of about 11 years. The children were
Staggered in age and size. The attending doctor
spoke briefly to the mother as she was about to
leave the hospital with her 10th offspring, “See
you again next year, Mrs. X.”

“No, you won’t!”’ she retorted. “Jed and I have
just figgered out what causes kids!”

Great horned owls have an amazingly varied
diet, ranging from snowshoe hares, jackrabbits,

red squirrels, flying squirrels, mice of all kinds, ~

muskrats, young beaver, ducks, coots, songbirds,
weasels, snakes, skunks, ground squirrels and
pocket gophers, to young beaver, etc.

Mary and I once found a dead horned ow] along
a roadside ditch. On examining it, we found a
number of porcupine quills embedded in the flesh
around the base of its beak and in its cheeks.
Dissection revealed that there were sull more of
them in its crop; the cause of death was apparent.

During the same year, we had been keeping
records of the food items utilized by a pair of
species in a wood near the farm. One day when I
climbed up to the nest, there were no fewer than
12 dead pocket gophers lying among the chicks.
As the season progressed, it became apparent that
this particular pair of horned owls, at that time,
were feeding their chicks largely upon pocket
gophers.

We put two and two together Unlike snowy
owls and short-ears, great horned owls are
noctumal or crepuscular in their habits; they do
their hunting at night or during dusk and early
dawn. Avoiding the bright light of day, pocket
gophers are abroad at the same time.

MEL COUVELIER

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Eager
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An eager and inquiring mind is
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for three University of Victoria
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Scheduled are courses on poet
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birds and on the Aztecs.

The first course, Blake in Per-
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