Burrowing owls dig new home at school

Article Date: 2009-08-29   Source: http://www.miamiherald.com   Comments: 0

By Patti Roth

Like the home-improvement TV show, While You Were Out, a group of do-gooders swept onto school property in Hollywood to spruce up a dwelling.

In this instance, though, the residence receiving all the attention was for burrowing owls, who for years have been raising hatchlings on a vacant slice of land between buildings at Driftwood Middle School.

Volunteers embarked on the project after the owls' old home, believed to be their turf since at least 1992, was destroyed.

During the summer, after the most recent group of owl babies learned to fly and took off on their own, the volunteers installed three artificial burrows. They even provided underground tunnels using lengths of PVC pipe.

''It's safe for them immediately,'' said Kelly Heffernan, an avian biologist who founded Project Perch to protect burrowing owls in Southeast Florida. ''It's just like a person. You don't want to start from scratch.''

Heffernan rounded up others eager to assist the owls at Driftwood Middle because their old dwelling was on land where school officials would be placing portables.

Staff members at the school said students were protective of the owl families who used the burrow year after year. Students and staff enjoyed watching babies learn to fly and adults standing guard outside the burrow.

Burrowing owls are protected by state law, and school officials waited until all the fledglings learned to fly and took off before doing any work on the site. They also provided the owls with a new starter site nearby, by digging out a chunk of land. The Project Perch crew received permission from school officials to take the starter concept even further, Heffernan said.

With volunteers and financial assistance from the South Florida Audubon Society, Project Perch built three separate burrows.

In addition to the PVC pipe, they installed perches for the birds to stand on while guarding their territory and their families. The crew also poured a mound of white sand at the entrance intended to draw the owls to the new location.

Brian Mealey, a wildlife biologist at the Institute of Wildlife Sciences in Miami-Dade County who served as both a consultant and volunteer for Project Perch, said he has built dozens of replacement burrows at construction sites and elsewhere. But he said this is the first time that he's aware that PVC pipe tunnels were installed at a Broward County school.

The pipe, he said, provides the birds with a stable tunnel that won't collapse. A cut-out section along the length of the pipe allows the birds to walk through the tunnel more naturally, with their feet in the dirt. Also, the pipes are placed in locations that allow the birds to customize their homes by digging farther and expanding their tunnels.

A week after the artificial burrows were built, volunteers from Project Perch returned to install protective barriers made of posts and rails.

To their delight, two owls were sitting outside the entrance of one burrow, and it appeared they explored another.

''They've definitely gone in and checked it,'' Heffernan said. ''You can see their footprints in the sand.''

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