Two weeks ago, "The New Yorker" featured a cartoon cover showing a cardinal father dotingly tending to his chicks in a nest secured in a normally improbable spot: atop a traffic signal in a crowded urban neighborhood. Titled "Shelter in Place," the artwork shows a woman looking at the birds longingly from her open apartment window.
It might be ironic that in our current period of pandemic it feels like our quieter streets and landscapes are making us safer from other threats. As a runner, I can attest firsthand that there are fewer cars whipping by on the normally busy roads and that the Phoenix air is much cleaner. But is it possible that sports-minded humans are not the only species benefiting from the lockdown?
Most notable on my runs along the Arizona Canal are the mallard ducklings that have recently hatched. I have seen broods as large as seven individual babies and as small as four. But what's fascinating is that after two or three weeks, many of these large groups are still in tact, not losing any members as siblings mature to self-sufficiency. Are their normal urban predators sated on other equally thriving animals?
Maybe owls and other birds of prey are benefiting most from any bounty in a pollution-reduced and traffic-free environment. At the top of the avian food change, they should have plenty of rodents and birds to feed on in my Biltmore neighborhood. And a recent discovery of a nearby great horned owl nest made me start to think that bustling Manhattan isn't the only urban area sharing its newly quiet streetscapes with a less wary wildlife population.
I stumbled upon the nest in a busy area of the Biltmore Resort, near the Adobe Golf Course. It was only a dozen feet above a closed parking valet stand, in the fork of a thick eucalyptus tree trunk. I first spied a lone parent occupying the site most mornings and afternoons two weeks ago. But this week when I started investigating what I thought had become an empty nest, I discovered one and then two owlets.
In the morning the two puffs of white down feathers were alone, and when I returned early in the afternoon on the same day they were still alone. But they didn't seem distressed or hungry, just sleepy and a little curious about their surroundings: exactly what I'd expect from baby owls. But where was their mother, or their father, or whoever tends to two newly-born raptors?
The Adobe has a bar and restaurant that has managed to hang-on through the COVID-19 shutdown by offering take-out food and, just recently, socially-distanced dine-in service. When I posed a couple of questions to their long-term staff I felt proudly like an investigative reporter and not just a curious birder. A twenty-six year masked veteran server told me that owls have been nesting in that tree for as long as she's been working at this local watering hole. And even more, a patron had informed her that an adult owl had been tending the babies that very morning.
Well I felt relieved that the owlets weren't abandoned, and they were probably just as relieved not to share a stuffy, cramped nest in 100 degree weather with a parent bigger than a five-pound bag of potatoes. But where was the mother? I peered higher in the tree's lofty canopy: lots of fluttering leaves but no birds. Scanning the perimeter I noticed additional eucalyptus trees a hundred feet or so away. The first tree: no owl. The second: empty. Ah, there she is, half way up, in the third tree.
I couldn't resist approaching her look-out tower and gazing up in awe as her elegant beauty came into focus against the green foliage. Quiet and still, she seems to be dozing in the first couple of pictures I snapped. But with her patience wearing thin, her right eye is clearly open and looking at me in my last few shots. Of course, her attention is certainly equally focused in the distance, directly behind me, at her nursery just a quick, silent flight away.
Several weeks of checking out the nest had piqued my curiosity in other ways. This aerie was not a bunch of twigs and branches like all the other ones I've seen: one nest high in the spiny arms of a saguaro cactus in a North Phoenix park, another even higher in a cottonwood tree in Prescott. Great horned owls don't actually build their own nest, rather, they reoccupy ones abandoned by other large birds of prey like eagles and hawks.
The Biltmore nest seemed to be bordered by a tacked-up blanket or towel on its exposed western side. This abode was not a far cry from the makeshift birdhouses and feeders countless bird lovers have constructed in their backyards since John James Audubon taught us to appreciate the avian life around us. So the great horned owl is no pandemic phenomena in this corner of Phoenix after all. In fact it's a safe bet the species has been nesting and hunting in the neighborhood for hundreds of years, long before someone in the community enhanced this nest site or even before Americans created a state out of irrigation canals and mining towns.
It might be ironic that in our current period of pandemic it feels like our quieter streets and landscapes are making us safer from other threats. As a runner, I can attest firsthand that there are fewer cars whipping by on the normally busy roads and that the Phoenix air is much cleaner. But is it possible that sports-minded humans are not the only species benefiting from the lockdown?
Most notable on my runs along the Arizona Canal are the mallard ducklings that have recently hatched. I have seen broods as large as seven individual babies and as small as four. But what's fascinating is that after two or three weeks, many of these large groups are still in tact, not losing any members as siblings mature to self-sufficiency. Are their normal urban predators sated on other equally thriving animals?
Maybe owls and other birds of prey are benefiting most from any bounty in a pollution-reduced and traffic-free environment. At the top of the avian food change, they should have plenty of rodents and birds to feed on in my Biltmore neighborhood. And a recent discovery of a nearby great horned owl nest made me start to think that bustling Manhattan isn't the only urban area sharing its newly quiet streetscapes with a less wary wildlife population.
I stumbled upon the nest in a busy area of the Biltmore Resort, near the Adobe Golf Course. It was only a dozen feet above a closed parking valet stand, in the fork of a thick eucalyptus tree trunk. I first spied a lone parent occupying the site most mornings and afternoons two weeks ago. But this week when I started investigating what I thought had become an empty nest, I discovered one and then two owlets.
In the morning the two puffs of white down feathers were alone, and when I returned early in the afternoon on the same day they were still alone. But they didn't seem distressed or hungry, just sleepy and a little curious about their surroundings: exactly what I'd expect from baby owls. But where was their mother, or their father, or whoever tends to two newly-born raptors?
The Adobe has a bar and restaurant that has managed to hang-on through the COVID-19 shutdown by offering take-out food and, just recently, socially-distanced dine-in service. When I posed a couple of questions to their long-term staff I felt proudly like an investigative reporter and not just a curious birder. A twenty-six year masked veteran server told me that owls have been nesting in that tree for as long as she's been working at this local watering hole. And even more, a patron had informed her that an adult owl had been tending the babies that very morning.
Well I felt relieved that the owlets weren't abandoned, and they were probably just as relieved not to share a stuffy, cramped nest in 100 degree weather with a parent bigger than a five-pound bag of potatoes. But where was the mother? I peered higher in the tree's lofty canopy: lots of fluttering leaves but no birds. Scanning the perimeter I noticed additional eucalyptus trees a hundred feet or so away. The first tree: no owl. The second: empty. Ah, there she is, half way up, in the third tree.
I couldn't resist approaching her look-out tower and gazing up in awe as her elegant beauty came into focus against the green foliage. Quiet and still, she seems to be dozing in the first couple of pictures I snapped. But with her patience wearing thin, her right eye is clearly open and looking at me in my last few shots. Of course, her attention is certainly equally focused in the distance, directly behind me, at her nursery just a quick, silent flight away.
Several weeks of checking out the nest had piqued my curiosity in other ways. This aerie was not a bunch of twigs and branches like all the other ones I've seen: one nest high in the spiny arms of a saguaro cactus in a North Phoenix park, another even higher in a cottonwood tree in Prescott. Great horned owls don't actually build their own nest, rather, they reoccupy ones abandoned by other large birds of prey like eagles and hawks.
The Biltmore nest seemed to be bordered by a tacked-up blanket or towel on its exposed western side. This abode was not a far cry from the makeshift birdhouses and feeders countless bird lovers have constructed in their backyards since John James Audubon taught us to appreciate the avian life around us. So the great horned owl is no pandemic phenomena in this corner of Phoenix after all. In fact it's a safe bet the species has been nesting and hunting in the neighborhood for hundreds of years, long before someone in the community enhanced this nest site or even before Americans created a state out of irrigation canals and mining towns.
 |
| Two great horned owlets in a eucalyptus tree in the Biltmore area of Phoenix. |
 |
| Alert owlet. |
 |
| Nesting owl two weeks before owlets were observed. |
 |
| Eucalyptus tree with nest in the trunk's fork on the Adobe Golf Course in the Biltmore area of Phoenix. |
 |
| Another shot of sleepy owlets. |
 |
| Dozing adult great horned owl in nearby eucalyptus tree. |
 |
| Alert parent. |
Comments
Post a Comment