Stopping Development in Its Tracks!
BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)
by
Budd Titlow
One of the best anti-development books I’ve ever read wasn’t written by a naturalist named Muir, or Thoreau, or Carson, or Leopold. No, the author is Carl Hiaasen, a very funny writer famous for his tongue-in-cheek tales about the various vagaries and foibles of life in South Florida.
Mr. Hiaasen’s book Hoot is all about a little owl that stands less than a foot tall and lives in a hole in the ground. It’s a book for young people who are just trying to find their way in life.
Here’s a synopsis: A young boy named Roy moves from Montana to Florida, where he takes on the burden of helping to save a family of burrowing owls by stopping the planned construction of Paula’s Pancake House in a vacant lot. By employing some crafty ecological strategy, Roy first makes some quirky new friends, then helps those friends expose the dishonesty of the developers and their total disregard for the environment. Through this process, Roy becomes a mature young man. Of course, the real heroes in Hoot are the burrowing owls that have created their home on the proposed development site.
A family of Burrowing Owls (Speotyto cunicularia) occupies a vacant lot in suburban South Florida. (Photo Copyright: Tania Thomson / Shutterstock.com)
Burrowing owls are found throughout open terrain—grasslands, prairies, savannas, deserts, farm/ranch land, golf courses, and urban/suburban vacant lots—in both North and South America. Despite their small size (about nine inches tall with two-foot wingspans) and ground roosting and nesting habits, they are real owls. They use their sharp talons to capture and kill prey, mostly large insects and small rodents, both on the wing and by running them down on the ground.
Demonstrating their smarts, burrowing owls regularly collect animal dung—especially from grazing horses and cattle—which they then spread around their dens. The provides these miniature birds of prey with their own home delivery service, since they eat the beetles and other crawling insects that are attracted to the livestock droppings. Another burrowing owl trick is to make hissing noises that sound just like a rattlesnake, to ward off unwanted intruders.
An adult burrowing owl poses on its hunting perch remaining vigilant for both prey and predator/human dangers. (Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow / NATUREGRAPHS)
While they are often active in the daytime, they mostly hunt like “normal” owls from dusk until dawn. In the western US, they primarily live in holes dug by prairie dogs In Florida, they typically live in the burrows of gopher tortoises where they have become tolerant of humans, often nesting on golf courses, airports, and farms.
When burrowing owls get in the way of “progress” (which happens often in South Florida) developers sometimes hire biologists to entice them to move into new burrows on other sites. At least this helps the tiny owls avoid being entombed when the bulldozers show up.
Photo Copyright: Budd Titlow / NATUREGRAPHS
Those of us who share our land with burrowing owls need to do all we can to help protect them. Throughout much of their range, these big-eyed, tiny-limbed birds of prey are considered rare species. In addition to land development, they’re severely threatened by indiscriminate use of pesticides and predation by many other animals—especially feral dogs and cats.
Sadly, when I heard Mr. Hiaasen speak in Florida, he was asked the following question: “Does this bird [Hoot] really exist and live in the ground or is it a figment of your imagination?” Obviously we need to do a better job of educating the public if we want to successfully protect future generations of “Hoots.”
Text Excerpted from Book: Bird Brains: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).
Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.
This Birding Life 