Researchers use dogs to find bats<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tTheir name comes from the tiny feather tufts — ‘ears’ — on the forehead. The tufts are often indistinguishable, showing only when erected; they may be used in social signals with other owls. The tufts have nothing whatever to do with functioning ears that register sounds. The real ears of most owls typically are asymmetrical: The shape and location of the ear opening is different on right and left sides of the head. Along with the facial disc of feathers, that’s what lets them localize their prey so well, even in darkness. The facial disc and ear asymmetry are best developed in owls that only hunt at night. The short-eared owl, however, hunts by both day and night, and uses vision as well as hearing.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Short-eared owls are hunters of open areas, flying low over meadows, sometimes hovering, sometimes scanning an area from a convenient stump or snag. They catch and eat all sorts of prey, from large insects to muskrats and grouse. Birds are major prey in some areas, especially near shorelines where waterbirds are popular food items. But in most places, small mammals, especially voles or lemmings, are the main prey. Both the numbers and the reproductive success of the owls often reflect the abundance of these prey items.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
In general, prey is decapitated — or de-winged — before being swallowed whole. Later, the owls regurgitate pellets of neatly packed indigestible bones and feathers. We curious naturalists love to find these deposits, so we can figure out the identity of the victims.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Short-eared owls nest in open areas—grasslands, tundra, marshes. Southeast Alaska is not well-endowed with those habitats, compared to much of the rest of Alaska, and if short-eared owls nest here, it must be uncommon. A pair of short-ears defends an area around the nest from other owls but reportedly does not defend a big feeding territory. As a result, nests are sometimes not very far apart (a few tens of meters).<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The female of a pair scrapes out a shallow bowl on the ground, lines it with grass and a few feathers, and lays her eggs. A typical clutch of eggs has about four to seven eggs, but occasionally more, particularly when prey is very abundant. She does all the incubating (about a month); the male delivers food to her. When the eggs hatch, he still brings food to her and she doles it out to the chicks.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
She lays one egg a day and starts incubating with the first egg, so the eggs hatch asynchronously, in the order of laying. Thus, the chicks are all of different sizes, and cannibalism of the runts may sometimes happen. The chicks are fluffy and nest-bound for a couple of weeks, after which they start to wander — eldest first, youngest last. But it takes another four or five weeks before they can fly and a year until they mature.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Populations of short-eared owls are declining, due primarily to habitat loss.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Mary F. Willson is a retired professor of ecology. “On The Trails” is a weekly column that appears every Wednesday.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I was hoping for something out of the ordinary — and I got lucky.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":59231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[149],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-59230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59230"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=59230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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