Burrow owls sighted

I had breakfast at S&L’s on Sunday. L has been working on stuccoing this big garden wall they put up around the front yard of the big beautiful house they’ve been working on since before I first met them back in 2005. There’s a really high section covering what’s to be a front gate. Half of that high section is capped with concrete, and half isn’t.

That’s the part inside which a female burrow owl decided to lay her eggs. Burrow owls are very small raptors the size and color of a prairie dog, which is convenient since they often cohabit prairie dog burrows. (get it?) As far as I know they don’t actually make burrows themselves, so their common alternate name ‘burrowing owl’ wouldn’t be strictly accurate but I can state from personal knowledge that they do live in dog towns and do get along with the rodents amicably. With mice, I’m guessing not so much. But they’re the only really social owls I know of. In fact they’re the only more-or-less cute owls I know of. Owls don’t normally do cute.

And now there’s at least one adult and two fuzzy grey chicks living inside S&L’s wall, right outside their big front windows. She’s gonna put off capping those blocks until she’s sure the chicks are grown and the nest is empty.

This pic’s about four years old, and you can just see the beginnings of the wall going up in the foreground.