Remodeling

Rusty and Iris have been living in their spacious home here in Houston, MN for nearly a year now. We've done several minor remodeling jobs to help Iris feel more comfortable, but today was the day for a major remodel.

Roger Meyer, Laurel Oien, and Hein Bloem spent the whoooooole day working on it today. First they took down the plywood panels, and I removed the curtains. Then they cut wooden slats to size and put them up in place of the panels, spaced two inches apart instead of one inch apart like the other slats. This would allow Rusty and Iris to have more of a view, but still hopefully keep them from thinking they want to try to fly outside.

Since they really haven't hung on the chain link on the north wall, we just did slats three feet down from the ceiling. The south wall is the one that gave the owls fits, so the slats there went from ceiling to six to nine feet down, depending on the location.

The side branch perch was flipped over to give them a fresh perching surface, and now it curves out in front of their new slatted view. (It used to curve toward the nest.) I think they're really going to like it.

The nest got a major rework too. It seemed tooooo spacious for them, so the front half was covered with plywood and Astroturf and will serve as a "landing and delivery" platform. The back half is still a nest, but there is now a side and roof over it to give more of a "cavity" feeling I hope Iris will like.

The release training cage got a mouse-proof barrier installed on the inside, all the way around. This will keep the mice IN the cage when the young owls are learning to hunt live prey. That cage will also get a huge dose of new slats, and eventually a couple of hide boxes, a perch where they can sit in the rain, the infrared illuminators, and cameras.

While Rusty and Iris were in the release training cage when we worked on their quarters, I used the opportunity to do a good hose-down of all their perches. Lots of poop came off the perches and walls, so that was excellent. And I fished out all kinds of gopher parts in every stage of decomposition from fresh to slimy to mummified to skeletonized. And now Iris is wondering where the heck all of the gophers she cached in the nest are....

I plan to do some camera and infrared illuminator adjustments also, so stay tuned!

Move over Scarlett, there's a new girl on the block.

Scarlett caused quite the commotion for Rusty and Iris as they were working on breeding, harassing them every day, late into the morning and starting early in the evening, sometimes even pestering them in the middle of the day while being mobbed by crows. She gradually reduced her appearances so we only heard her maybe once or twice a week during the summer. But it's been maybe a month or so since we've heard her.

But the peace and quiet didn't last. ANOTHER wild female showed up a couple of mornings ago, and she seems just as adamant as Scarlett was. She started hooting at about 5:30 AM and kept on nearly straight through until 9 AM! Rusty was hooting and Alice was hooting and the new lady was hooting.

As with Scarlett's first visit, this new lady couldn't have cared less about us humans. We were able to open windows to do audio and video recordings as well as take pictures. She was in the trees right outside the bedroom window, and quite loud.

Eventually we had enough photos and videos and recordings, so went about our morning. But when I heard Alice jump against a window upstairs, I went up to investigate. Alice was looking down toward the top of the porch roof, so I looked over her shoulder. There stood the new owl only a few feet away!

I ran downstairs, grabbed the camera, and started taking more photos because she was so close. But I realized she was holding her left eye shut, and it looked wet. I quickly reviewed the pictures from earlier in the morning, and realized she had hurt her eye between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. Yikes! I certainly couldn't catch her, even though Marge Gibson, the awesome rehabber who runs the Raptor Education Group in Antigo, WI, was coming that morning to pick up gophers to feed to her birds. Oh well, hopefully it was something that would heal on its own.

At any rate, we heard the new lady the next night, but Rusty, Iris, and Alice had nothing to say this time. Virginia, the resident female, had something to say about it though! As I type this she's hooting again, and Alice is exchanging words with her, and not nice pleasantries either.

Hopefully this lady will move on faster than Scarlett did. Poor Rusty, he's such a stud that he attracts females like crazy!

Taking a Bath

OK, so yesterday wasn't as hot as it will be today...over 100 F without the heat index!! You know it's bad when the owls are panting at 5 AM. I'm amazed the technology out in the cages can handle this heat, but it does somehow.

Not surprisingly, Rusty had a bath this morning to help keep cool. Iris watched from the top of the hide box. Basically it's the same as a little bird taking a bath, except slower and bigger splashes.