Burrowing Owl Totally Explained

Everything about The Burrowing Owl totally explained

The Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) is a small, long-legged owl found throughout open landscapes of North and South America. Burrowing owls can be found in grasslands, rangelands, agricultural areas, deserts, or any other dry, open area with low vegetation. They nest and roost in burrows, such as those excavated by prairie dogs. Unlike most owls, burrowing owls are often active during the day, although they tend to avoid the mid-day heat. Most hunting is still done from dusk until dawn, when their owl apomorphies are most advantageous.
Burrowing owls are able to live for at least 9 years in the wild and over 10 years in captivity. They are often killed by vehicles when crossing roads, and have many natural enemies, including badgers, coyotes, and snakes. They are also killed by both feral and domesticated cats and dogs.

Description

Burrowing owls have bright yellow eyes. The beak can be yellow or greenish depending on the subspecies. The legs are incompletely feathered and grayish in color. They lack ear tufts and have a flattened facial disc. The owls have prominent white eyebrows and a white "chin" patch which they expand and display during certain behaviors.
Adult owls have brown upperparts with white spotting. The breast and belly are white with variable brown spotting or barring. Juvenile owls are similar in appearance, but they lack most of the white spotting above and brown barring below. Also, the young owls have a buff bar across the upper wing and their breast may be buffy rather than white.
Males and females are similar in size and appearance. However, adult males sometimes appear lighter in color because they spend more time outside the burrow during daylight, and their feathers become sun-bleached. The average adult is slightly larger than an American Robin, at 25 cm (10 inches) length, 53 cm (21 inches) wingspan, and 170g (6 oz) weight.

Taxonomy and systematics

The burrowing owl is sometimes separated in the monotypic genus Speotyto. This is based on an overall different morphology and karyotype. On the other hand, osteology and DNA sequence data suggests that the Burrowing Owl is just a terrestrial version of the Athene little owls, and it's today placed in that genus by most authorities.
A considerable number of subspecies have been described, but they differ little in appearance and the taxonomy of several needs to be validated. Most subspecies are found in/near the Andes and in the Antilles. Only A. c. hypugaea and A. c. floridana are found in North America. Although distinct from each other, the relationship of the Floridan subspecies to (and its distinctness from) the Caribbean birds isn't quite clear.

Subspecies List

A. c. cunicularia (Molina, 1782): Southern Burrowing Owl – Lowlands of S Bolivia and S Brazil south to Tierra del Fuego.
A. c. grallaria (Temminck, 1822): Brazilian Burrowing Owl – Central and E Brazil.
A. c. hypugaea (Bonaparte, 1825): Northern (or Western) Burrowing Owl – S Canada through Great Plains south to Central America.
A. c. floridana (Ridgway, 1874): Floridan Burrowing Owl – Florida and Bahamas (Caribbean).
A. c. guadeloupensis (Ridgway, 1874): Guadeloupe Burrowing Owl – Formerly Guadeloupe and Marie-Galante Islands: Extinct (c.1890)
A. c. amaura (Lawrence, 1878): Antiguan Burrowing Owl – Formerly Antigua, Saint Kitts, and Nevis Islands: Extinct (c.1905)
A. c. troglodytes (Wetmore & Swales, 1886): Hispaniolan Burrowing Owl – Hispaniola, Gonâve Island, and Beata Island.
A. c. rostrata (C. H. Townsend, 1890): Revillagigedo Burrowing Owl – Isla Clarión, Revillagigedo Islands.
A. c. nanodes (Berlepsch & Stolzmann, 1892): Southwest Peruvian Burrowing Owl – SW Peru.
A. c. brachyptera (Richmond, 1896): Margarita Burrowing Owl – Isla Margarita.
A. c. tolimae (Stone, 1899): West Colombian Burrowing Owl – W Colombia.
A. c. juninensis (Berlepsch & Stolzmann, 1902): South Andean Burrowing Owl – Andes from Central Peru to NW Argentina.
A. c. punensis (Chapman, 1914): Puna Burrowing Owl – Altiplano region around Peruvian-Ecuadorian border. Probably a junior synonym of A. c. juninensis.
A. c. arubensis (Cory, 1915): Aruba Burrowing Owl – Aruba.
A. c. intermedia (Cory, 1915): West Peruvian Burrowing Owl – W Peru. Possibly a synonym of A. c. nanodes.
A. c. minor (Cory, 1918): Guyanan Burrowing Owl – S Guyana and Roraima region.
A. c. carrikeri (Stone, 1922): East Colombian Burrowing Owl – E Colombia. (Possibly a junior synonym of A. c. tolimae)
A. c. pichinchae (Boetticher, 1929): West Ecuadorean Burrowing Owl – W Ecuador.
A. c. boliviana (L. Kelso, 1939): Bolivian Burrowing Owl – Bolivian altiplano.
A. c. apurensis (Gilliard, 1940): Venezuelan Burrowing Owl – NW Venezuela. Possibly a synonym of A. c. brachyptera.
A. c. partridgei (Olrog, 1976): Corrientes Burrowing Owl – Corrientes Province, Argentina. Probably a synonym of A. c. cunicularia.
A. c. guantanamensis (Garrido, 2001): Cuban Burrowing Owl – Cuba and Isla de la Juventud.

A paleosubspecies, A. c. providentiae, has been described from fossil remains from the Pleistocene of the Bahamas. How these birds relate to the extant A. c. floridana - that is, whether they were among the ancestors of that subspecies, or whether they represented a more distant lineage that completely disappeared later - is unknown.
In addition, prehistoric fossils of similar owls have been recovered from many islands in the Caribbean (Barbuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Mona Island, and Puerto Rico). These birds became extinct towards the end of the Pleistocene, probably because of ecological and sea-level changes at the end of the last ice age rather than human activity. These fossil owls differed in size from present-day burrowing owls, and their relationship to the modern taxon hasn't been resolved.

Distribution

Before European colonization, burrowing owls probably inhabited every suitable area of the New World, but in North America they've experienced some restrictions in distribution since. However, in parts of South America they're expanding their range with deforestation.
They range from the southern portions of the western Canadian provinces through southern Mexico and western Central America. They are also found in Florida and many Caribbean islands. In South America, they're patchy in the northwest and through the Andes, but widely distributed from southern Brazil to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.
Burrowing owls are year-round residents in most of their range. Birds that breed in Canada and northern USA usually migrate south to Mexico and southern USA during winter months.

Diet

The highly variable diet includes small mammals, small birds, snakes (of reasonable edible size), lizards, frogs, insects, and scorpions. But the owls mainly eat large insects and small rodents. Although burrowing owls often live in close proximity to ground squirrels, they rarely prey upon them. Unlike other owls, they also eat fruits and seeds, especially the fruit of tasajillo (Cylindropuntia leptocaulis) and other prickly pear and cholla cacti. On Clarión Island, where mammalian prey is lacking, they feed essentially on crickets and prickly pear fruit, adding Clarión Wrens and young Mourning Doves on occasion. When hunting they wait on a perch until they spot prey. Then they swoop down on prey or fly up to catch insects in flight. Sometimes they chase prey on foot across the ground.

Reproduction

The nesting season begins in late March or April in North America. Burrowing owls are usually monogamous, but occasionally a male will have two mates.
The female will lay an egg every 1 or 2 days until she's completed a clutch, which can consist of 4-12 eggs (usually 9). She will then incubate the eggs for three to four weeks while the male brings her food. After the eggs hatch both parents will feed the chicks. Four weeks after hatching, the chicks are able to make short flights and begin leaving the nest burrow. The parents will still help feed the chicks for 1 to 3 months. While most of the eggs will hatch, only four to five chicks usually survive to leave the nest.
Site fidelity rates appear to vary among populations. In some locations, owls will frequently reuse a nest several years in a row. Owls in migratory northern populations are less likely to return to the same burrow every year. Also, as with many other birds, the female owls are more likely to disperse to a different site than are male owls.

Conservation

The burrowing owl is endangered in Canada, threatened in Mexico, and a species of special concern in Florida and most of the western USA. It is common and widespread in open regions of many Neotropical countries, where they sometimes even inhabit fields and parks in cities. In regions bordering the Amazon Rainforest they're spreading with deforestation. It is therefore listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. Burrowing owls are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. They are also included in CITES Appendix II.
The major reasons for declining populations in North America are control programs for prairie dogs and loss of habitat, although burrowing owls readily inhabit some anthropogenic landscapes, such as airport grasslands or golf courses. Genetic analysis of the two North American subspecies indicates that inbreeding isn't a problem within those populations.. If everything has been correctly prepared, the owl colony will move over to the new site in the course of a few nights at most. It will need to be monitored occasionally for the following months or until the major human construction nearby has ended.

Burrowing owls in popular culture

In fiction

Carl Hiaasen's young adult novel Hoot (2002) is about a group of school kids trying to stop the planned construction of a pancake house that would go hand in hand with the destruction of the burrowing owls' habitat in a small town in Florida. Live burrowing owls were featured in the movie adaptation.
There is also a burrowing owl named Digger featured in the Guardians of Ga'hoole series by Kathryn Lasky.
Pigwidgeon of Harry Potter is a Burrowing Owl.

In film

New Line and Walden Media released Hoot to wide theatrical release on May 5, 2006, a story about three kids saving a population of Florida burrowing owls.

In music

The Philadelphia-based 1980s satirical pop punk band Dead Milkmen wrote "Stuart", a narrative song in which the narrator expresses incredulity at the sight of a neighbor kid looking for his pet "burrow owl" in a tree:

"Jumpin Jesus on a pogo stick. Everyone knows that a burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?"

In addition to "Stuart", the burrowing owl has been included, sometimes subtly, at other times not, in other songs by the Dead Milkmen, including the repeated chanting of its name by high pitched voices in the background of the song "Smokin' Banana Peels".

In sports

The burrowing owl is the official mascot for the intercollegiate athletic teams of Florida Atlantic University.

Footnotes

Further Information

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