By KEVIN HOWE
khowe@montereyherald.com
Against a backdrop of green mountainsides splashed with sunlight and brushed with misty clouds, 16 white-faced barn owls were released into the Big Sur wilds Thursday. The birds were either orphans or injured owls brought to the SPCA of Monterey County's Wildlife Center, where they have spent the past six months being readied for freedom.
Of the six adults, one had been attacked by a dog, another hit by a car and the rest hurt in some unknown way, according to SPCA Development Director Susan Koza. All of them, she said, were "more than ready to go." The owls were released in two groups of five and one of six out of cardboard pet boxes from a deck at the 860-acre Glen Deven Ranch overlooking Garrapata Canyon. The ranch was donated by the late Dr. and Mrs.Seeley Mudd to the Big Sur Land Trust, and the release was an example of the partnership forged between the Land Trust and the SPCA, said Corey Brown, executive director of the Big Sur Land Trust. "They protect and preserve the animals," he said,"and we protect and preserve their habitat." The owls' new home, he said, is a wildlife corridor that stretches from the Carmel River to Cambria along the Big Sur Coast.
Most of the birds took to the skies without hesitation, though one flew to a nearby tree and hung upside-down, batlike, for several minutes. The release was the first free flight for the orphans, said SPCA Community Outreach Director Lisa Hoefler. Unlike a group of condors released by the Ventana Wilderness Society last month, the owls didn't need a lot of conditioning against human contact, said Anne Mills of Carmel Valley, a 20-year volunteer with the SPCA Wildlife Center. "They're not handled by a lot of people, once they're weaned from hand-feeding," she said. "They don't want much to do with people." In the case of the orphans, they were hand-fed cut-up mice, then taught to hunt live mice, Mills said, but the adults didn't need any hunting lessons. The injured birds received veterinary care and all had an L-shaped cage to fly in. The cage, Mills said,is shaped to force the owls to bank in both directions and allow wildlife observers to see whether both wings are strong and healed.
The release was timed to give the birds time to find spots for the nesting season, which begins in March, she said. The barn owl, tyto alba, is the most widespread bird species on earth, Mills said. Barn owls are found worldwide and throughout the United States, particularly in California and the Southwest. Barn owls control rodents better than traps, poison or cats, according to the Audubon Society, and at no cost. They produce large broods once or twice a year, and each young owl as it nears maturity will eat the equivalent of a dozen mice per night, while adult barn owls kill and consume the equivalent of one large rat or gopher per night.
The Owl Rehabilitation Research Foundation of Ontario, Canada, reports that barn owls consume twice as much food for their weight as other owls. They nest in hollow trees and buildings, holes in cliffs and cut banks, and sometimes in stacked hay bales and palm trees. Mills noted that the owl eggs hatch in the same nest at different times, and the youngest birds are sometimes starved out or pushed out of the nest by their siblings. These are often the orphans brought to the SPCA for care.
The Glen Deven Ranch "is good habitat for the barn owl," said Barbara Baldock, president of the SPCA board, with plenty of prey and nesting sites. "It's worked out perfectly." The SPCA also releases great-horned owls in Carmel Valley, she said, but lets the barn owls loose in separate areas, because the great-horned owls will eat them if they catch them, as will hawks. "It's a raptor-eat-raptor world out there," Baldock said.
Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416.
Posted on Fri, Jan. 24, 2003 on www.Montereyherald.com
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