REBECCA L. RHOADES
If you spend any amount of time online, you’re guaranteed to come across videos of pint-size mottled birds with slender legs and expressive wide-eyed looks chasing each other around like mini loaves of bread on stilts, awkwardly bobbing and weaving their heads and staring intently into the camera.
American burrowing owls were once common across Arizona’s available desert and agricultural lands, and these strange social media sensations are known as such.
Burrowing owls ( Athene cunicularia ), one of the smallest owls in North America and the only one of its kind to reside underground, are approximately 8 inches tall and only weigh about 7 ounces. As their name implies, they make their homes in burrows. They are regarded as a representative of the Southwest’s natural and historical heritage. Additionally, they are protected as a state species of concern and a bird of conservation concern for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The existence of burrowing owls has been threatened by contemporary development and the continuing loss of open desert habitat. Greg Clark initially noticed something was wrong when Gregg worked on the Arizona Breeding Bird Atlas project in the middle of the 1990s. ” We were no finding nesting owls in historic locations where they were also documented”, he recalls.
Burrowing owls have evolved to occupy prairie dogs and ground squirrels’ abandoned burrows. Particularly prevalent were they in the Kaibab National Forest near Seligman, which is also home to the critically endangered black-footed ferrets, Gunnison’s prairie dogs, and hematite hawks.
” Burrowing owls are a sentinel species for other birds and mammals”, Clark explains. The other three main species suffer if you lose any of them. The prairie dogs, which would essentially eat everything, lose control of them, and their population would collapse. Therefore the owls would not get the burrows that would be dug, and they’d have no place to live”. The number of prairie dogs and ferrets has decreased dramatically thanks to development, drought, and previous extermination campaigns, which also has decreased the number of burrows.
Burrowing owl populations decreased significantly in the areas outside Seligman, as well as in some of the Prescott Valley, the Navajo Nation, and the grasslands around Douglas. ” When they can’t find burrows, whether natural or synthetic, they can get picked off by other predators, particularly great horned owls”, Clark notes. You are at risk if you don’t have a burrow, according to the saying. That’s the “bottom line” for burrowing owls, really.
SAVING BURROWING OWLS
Clark has coordinated the habitat for burrowing owls for Cave Creek-based raptor rescue Wild at Heart since 2001. The nonprofit organization is a global leader in slithering owl relocation.
” The vast majority of owls are at risk because they’re in the inappropriate place”, Clark explains. The loss of croplands, as well as the development of housing communities, professional complexes, and yet highways are the main culprits.
People frequently ask Clark,” Why should we care about these birds?”, Clark continues. Well, they’re a marker for powerful land use. If a nesting owl is living on a piece of land that has been damaged by overgrazing, invasive species, or drought, you’re doing a fairly good job. Additionally, they are one of the most likable raptors. You can admire the prowess of raptors for catching prey or simply appreciate how they look. However, there aren’t many owls that will truly make you laugh aloud. Burrowing owls exhibit characteristics of “tiny much people”
Wildlife surveys may be required if the project is close to empty grasslands or desert areas, even though Arizona does no. When land owls are discovered, the developers make a call to Wild at Heart to capture and take the birds away. The rescue next partners with secret and government landowners to relocate them to new habitats. Longroad Energy comes in at that point.
UNEXPECTED SANCTUARY
Thermal farms have not always had the best reputation when it comes to wildlife, especially birds. In earlier farms, large mirrors that aimed sunlight at a northern receiver tower and produced intense heat were used to create heliostat panels. These overheated beams of light could singe the feathers of birds, igniting them in midair.
” They didn’t cause mass-casualty events by any means, but those were not environments in which birds could survive if they flew through them”, says Deron Lawrence, vice president of Environmental at Longroad Energy. No one in the United States is currently building concentrating renewable, according to the statement.
Today, fresh energy companies use photovoltaic panels that absorb sunlight rather than reflect it. These panels are not only more economical but even safer for the environment. Renewable panels, according to Lawrence, “are exceptional perches for birds.”
On the outskirts of Tonopah, about 60 miles north of Phoenix, Longroad runs the enormous Sun Streams Complex close to the Palo Verde Generating Station. The nearly 10, 000-acre complex, of which about 6, 000 acres are developed, is divided into four thermal facilities. The available land masses are characterized as creosote flats, smooth, steep terrain that is mostly covered in creosote bushes.
” Our solar farms are natural ground and vegetation or desert underneath the panels,” Lawrence claims. ” When the site is built, the ground is generally never disturbed for the life of the project, which is several decades. So the solar farms create actually lovely wildlife habitats.
He continues,” People have been looking at the sites, and they’re discovering that solar farms are basically protecting some of the smaller mammals. And birds, particularly ground-nesting birds, will find places to nest at thermal farms”.
Lawrence’s assertions are supported by recent studies by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the Department of Energy and the Argonne National Laboratory. The research facilities have been analyzing two renewable sites in Minnesota and finding that native plants thrive under and around the panels, increasing habitats for animals such as bats and critical pollinators, including bees, butterflies, and beetles.
All of this creates the ideal setting for burrowing owls.
RECORDING A HOME
Longroad set off 250 acres of land for owl habitat, and in March 2025, Clark and the Wild at Heart team relocated nine owl pairs and one single male from a housing project 50 miles away to the thermal site.
The owls were placed inside a network of unnatural burrows, each made of chicken wire, chicken wire, and concrete blocks made of half of a 50-gallon plastic drum that resembles the size of a typical prairie dog burrow.
The owls are unable to construct their own burrows. The soil is only way to tough”, Clark says. They appear to prefer our burrows to any of the applicable organic ones, according to them. They will generally move into one of mine and leave a natural burrow.
For the first 30 days, the burrows are tented. This enables the rescue team to feed the birds frozen mice and keep track of their health, and ensures that the owls are acclimated to their new homes without foaring off. Volunteers continue to provide food for the owls for another seven days after the tents are removed while they get used to their fresh hunting grounds.
” Then that’s it”, Clark says. ” Burrowing owls are pretty adaptable,” said one owl. They will tolerate essentially anything. They actually only care about things that can catch and eat them. As much as they have a burrow and a constant supply of food, once they understand the risk for a spot, they’ll dig in and make the location their home.
Spiders, pinacate beetles, and crickets are all eaten by burrowing owls. They’re also a major predator of scorpions, and they’re also known to catch frogs, toads, smaller snakes, bats, and rodents.
There is a constant supply of food for the owls because the solar panels attract insects. According to Clark,” The owls hunt and eat around the base of the panels.” ” Often there are so many insects that they look like popcorn in a skillet, bouncing all over the place”.
The thermal farms are also protected from larger birds of prey by fencing around the thermal farms, which prevents coyotes and foxes from attacking the burrows.
Within one month of the primary relocation, all of the females had laid eggs. 29 of the 36 chicks that euthanized survived. ” We had 29 chicks that year that fled. We generally created 29 new baby owls out of the 18 or nine pairs that we started with”, Lawrence notes. What’s really interesting is that the owls spent the entire winter without receiving any additional food. The owls started breeding and producing eggs suddenly this past spring, but we now have another group of young owls being raised.
While time will tell if this experiment is inevitably successful and can be replicated at other solar sites across the state and country, Clark and everyone at Wild at Heart and Longroad remain good. ” I’m really happy about the outcomes so far,” Clark declares. The birthrate of the juveniles that is higher than that of the adults who were the original population. And that’s precisely how it’s supposed to work”.
Visit www. for more information or to volunteer. wildathearstellers org and www. longroadenergy .com
