{"id":26663,"date":"2014-09-20T05:51:34","date_gmt":"2014-09-20T11:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=26663"},"modified":"2014-09-20T05:51:34","modified_gmt":"2014-09-20T11:51:34","slug":"burrowing-owls-and-badger-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/20\/burrowing-owls-and-badger-holes\/","title":{"rendered":"Burrowing Owls And Badger Holes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite their name Burrowing Owls seldom dig their own burrows, even though they’re fully capable of doing so.\u00a0 Most often they occupy abandoned\u00a0burrows dug by other burrowing\u00a0animals such as badgers, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, skunks, marmots, kangaroo rats, armadillos and even tortoises.\u00a0 Once occupied, these “borrowed burrows”\u00a0are renovated and maintained by the owls by digging but Florida Burrowing Owls are the only ones that normally excavate their own burrows (I wonder why that’s true – a\u00a0dirth of burrowing mammals in the Sunshine State, perhaps?)<\/p>\n

I’ve been aware for years that these owls sometimes take over badger holes but it’s something I’ve never been able to document without question\u00a0until this week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

Some readers may recall this Antelope Island badger that I posted about\u00a0last May<\/a>.\u00a0 It was popping in and out of a recently dug hole and it was obvious that the badger had been the primary\u00a0excavator.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

There were actually two holes adjacent to each other (you can see the other, darker\u00a0burrow mound behind the badger) that were most likely separate entrances to the same burrow.\u00a0 The badger had killed a Long-tailed Weasel and in this image it’s about to disappear down the burrow with the\u00a0weasel.<\/p>\n

The badger hole is within about six feet of a road on the island and I’ve been watching it carefully all summer but never saw the badger (or any other critter)\u00a0there again.\u00a0 It had obviously been abandoned because there were never any fresh tracks or scat around the dirt mound.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"burrowing<\/p>\n

But a few days ago after being gone for six days on our Montana camping trip it became obvious that in my absence the burrow had been “purposefully recycled” and was now occupied by at least one Burrowing Owl.\u00a0 Here you see the owl on top of the mound of the same badger hole.\u00a0 The light and angle were poor and there are out of focus obstructions in front of the bird but this image documents for me the fact that the badger hole now has a new tenant.\u00a0\u00a0I also thought it was interesting to see the\u00a0difference in vegetation around the burrow\u00a0over four months.\u00a0\u00a0 Cheat Grass was the dominant\u00a0plant around the burrow back in May but now the grass has been displaced by other vegetation.<\/p>\n

The natural skeptic in me always appreciates being able to observe or document natural history “factoids” that I’ve always assumed to be true because somebody else said it was so.<\/p>\n

This owl at a badger hole was one of those…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been aware for years that these owls sometimes take over badger holes but it’s something I’ve never been able to document without question until this week.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,818,334,365],"tags":[31,819,2234,2233,62,80,209,311],"class_list":["post-26663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-badgers","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-badger","tag-badger-hole","tag-burrow","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-cheat-grass","tag-long-tailed-weasel","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/badger-2044b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6W3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}