ARIZONA DAILY STAR: Mon., July 24, 2006
Underground help for owls
Arizona's burrowing owls aren't an endangered species, and Greg Clark would like them to stay that way. With volunteer labor, borrowed backhoes, buried plastic 5-gallon buckets and PVC pipe, he's been doing his best to build artificial burrows for the little owls.
Clark works with Wild at Heart, a Cave Creek-based not-for-profit that has led the effort to move hundreds of the tiny owls displaced from agricultural land being developed in Maricopa County to artificial burrows installed throughout the rest of the state. He estimates volunteers have dug nearly 2,000 burrows, roughly equally divided between the northern, southern, eastern and western parts of the state.
"They collect stinky things and put them in front of their burrows," says Ostergaard. "They're famous for collecting dog feces, coyote feces, horse feces — crap hoarding."
She says there's a theory that they may be trying to attract insects, one of their favorite foods.
Clark said he believes they do it to mask the scent of eggs in their burrows, to fool predators.
They have another, more endearing trait, says Alex Jácome, of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, a leading sponsor of the relocation program in Southern Arizona, from Marana throughout metro Tucson and south to Canoa Ranch and Elgin.
Jácome calls them "an ecological exterminator. They're pretty voracious little creatures."
That, in part, explains their preference for the edges of fields, where wildlife biologists say they find a lush supply of insects and a lack of habitat for their predators — raptors.
Full story: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/139104