Superbowl

From Weekly Times

A biological rodent control initiative founded by a Sunshine Coast local was crowned this year’s winner of The Hatch: Taronga Accelerator Program, taking home a massive cash prize.

Biological rodent control initiative Owls Eat Rats was crowned this year’s winner of The Hatch: Taronga Accelerator Program, taking home a massive $50,000 cash prize.

Founded by Sunshine Coast local Alastair Duncan, Owls Eat Rats is a landscape-level initiative that supports barn owl populations as a natural, long-term solution for rodent control in agriculture.

Through the installation of nesting boxes, hunting roosts and ecological monitoring, Owls Eat Rats promotes “the return and ongoing presence of these native predators in farming landscapes as an alternative solution to rodenticide”.

Mr Duncan said many farmers were forced to use environmentally damaging poisons for rodent-control because they can’t access other options.

“The most widely used are anticoagulant rodenticides that are really harmful to the environment and not great for our food,” Mr Duncan said.

Australia’s rats have also developed a “genetic resistance” to many chemicals used by farmers, Mr Duncan said.

“They’ve got this genetic immunity to these really toxic poisons, so the only response is to double down on more poisons,” he said.

“So the efficacy is dropping but the concentration of these chemicals in our wildlife is going up.”

As an alternative, Mr Duncan’s initiative builds “beautiful, safe habitats” that draw owls to farmland.

“They [control rodent populations] the natural way and it’s a year-round protection,” he said.

On Wednesday, June 25, Mr Duncan was one of nine founders of six start-ups who went head-to-head in a competitive pitch event held at Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

After what Mr Duncan called “a privilege and fantastic opportunity to engage with like minded change-makers,” in the program, Owls Eat Rats was awarded the grant.

“Winning is mind-blowing and the money is huge, but the actual program itself was amazing,” Mr Duncan said.

“We came in with this beautiful idea and some great research, but we walked away with all these amazing contacts and a 12-month plan for how to bring this idea forward.

“Even if we didn’t win the prize, we would be so well placed for what comes next.”

Taronga Conservation Society Australia chief executive officer, Cameron Kerr AO said he was “incredibly impressed” by the calibre of this year’s Hatch cohort, especially Owls Eat Rats.

“Each of the start-up founders offered thoughtful and practical solutions to some of the most urgent environmental challenges,” he said.

“We’re excited to see where [Owls Eat Rats] goes next, and we’re immensely grateful to our donors for backing early-stage ideas like this.

“With their continued support, we can help turn groundbreaking thinking into lasting environmental impact."

From Lisa Meyers Swanson

Where's the fire?

Burrowing Owl - Arizona

From Robby Villabona

In my almost nightly walks to search for civets I occasionally run into other night creatures. It was my first time to see a Philippine scops owl in the wild and it didn't seem to care being photographed at close range. It stayed on its perch for close to an hour and was still there when I left to go home.

I'd been hearing their calls around our village since 2021 but never had the luck to find one until last night.

Tagaytay City, 22 May 2025

OM-1 + M.Zuiko 40-150 f/2.8 Pro + MC-14 1.4x teleconverter + Nitecore MH-40 Pro ISO-200 1/200s f/4 210mm

From Martin Buckley

I'd make a terrible hitman.

Spotted every single time by a Little, Short Eared & Barn Owl!

Luckily the only thing i would ever shoot a bird with is a camera and lens.

From Diana Rafferty Yatson

Striped Owl

Costa Rica, March 2025

Wow, what a beauty. I'm familiar with the Spectacled and the Crested Owls of Costa Rica, but not so much the Striped. The triple black of the beak, eyes, and ears looks really good.

From Izzy Edwards

Great Gray Owl photographed in Idaho. One of the only times I have seen this species in ID.

I don't know much about Idaho. I know they have potatoes, and now I know they've got giant owls. I'm very happy when I've got plenty of both of those things...

From Harold Wilion

Fluffy little Barred Owl doing some tree climbing.

From Ray Yeager

Northern Saw-whet Owl with a vole its mate dropped off.

Maine

From Dr Abhijit Bagui

Oriental scops owl

Nikon D 500,200-500

F7.1,1/640s, iso 350,750mm, natural light

Sundarban

From Mark Begg

Tawny Owl family, West Lothian. One adult and two youngsters photographed.

From Riyajul Islam

Brown Boobook

Nikon D7500 with Nikkor 200-500mm

Kolkata, West Bengal, India

From Shrirang Mukta Kulkarni

Good morning friends!

Spotted this fearless little Asian Barred Owlet soaking in the morning light near Rong Tong Station. Always a treat to see an owl that's so comfortable in daylight!

From Lim Ser Chai

Dusky Eagle Owl

Tanjung Karang - Malaysia

From Lavin Photography

Shoutout to the dads balancing three screaming kids and one desperate attempt at inner peace.

Eastern Screech Owl family (minus mom since she's buried deep among the leaves).

Minnesota

From Gavin McCue via International Owl Center

An incredible photo of a little Blue-gray Gnatcatcher mobbing a Barred Owl. Most birds hate owls and if they see them, they will dive bomb the owls, sometimes actually hitting their head. Photographer Gavin McCue says he just happened to be in the right place at the right time and had a very high shutter speed to capture this.

From OPB

On the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Eastern Oregon, old juice barrels serve as homes for tiny burrowing owls. The former apple, peach and strawberry barrels have been refashioned and buried to create man-made nests and caverns for the birds.

Late every spring, scientists peek inside to gauge the age and welfare of the burrowing owl chicks.

Sometimes, they’re met with what sounds like a hissing rattlesnake.

It’s a defense mechanism, said Janet Johnson, the Natural Resources Program Manager for the Oregon Military Department. The department works on the burrowing owl project with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

“Their best defense? Just sound like something that’s going to bite,” Johnson said. “They’ve evolved over time.”

The noise is designed to scare predators like coyotes and badgers. Sometimes, Johnson said, it also gets scientists.

“If they hit that sound right away, I still jump,” she said. “I know it’s not a rattlesnake, but it’s a natural human reaction to just be like, ‘Oh!’”

The researchers are earning hisses today because they’re planning to clamp bands on baby owl’s legs.

“There’s this really small window where they’re large enough that the band’s not going slip over their foot as they’re still growing, but they’re young enough that they can’t fly away when we get here,” said Solai Le Fay, a graduate student at Boise State University, who is also heading up the fieldwork this summer.

The young owls’ legs won’t get much bigger, so these bands will stay in place and not get tight. The numbers on the bands will stick with them for the rest of their lives. That allows scientists to keep track of them — and their ancestry.

“We’ll know exactly who they are, where they came from, who they’re related to,” Le Fay said.

Solai Le Fay reaches into the owls’ man-made burrows to collect baby owls for banding.

The numbers are a low-tech way to track the birds, like when they fly elsewhere for the winter. Many of these owls will head to California, Johnson said.

“On the wintering grounds, if we captured this baby down there, we would know. Without the radio transmitter, we would be able to tell that bird was wintering wherever it was caught again,” Johnson said.

To get the baby owls, Le Fay reaches her hand into the man-made burrow. She gently pulls each owl out, as their siblings hiss, and places them into a black bucket for holding.

“I just got five,” she said, noting the number of owlettes in the burrows compared to previous counts done at each site.

“Last year we had much larger clutches,” she said. “We were banding nests of like six-plus (owlettes). I think the most was 11 chicks in one nest. Usually we see a lot of chicks when they’re little and then they slowly drop off throughout the season.”

Le Fay gently cradled each 23-day-old bird in her left hand as she got ready to place a band on its left leg.

They place the bands on the young owls’ left legs so that they know it was born at the Depot. If they find an unbanded adult, they place a band on its right leg.

The process starts with putting the tiny, metal band into a tool that helps open and close the band — kind of a special set of pliers. The seam must be lined up and even, so that scientists can read the numbers when the owl is standing.

Later, Le Fay coached this reporter through banding an owlette.

“ You don’t want them kicking around as you’re closing the band on the legs,” she said. “So with your ring and pinky finger, you can hold this leg down and kind of grab the joint to keep it still. Then slip (the band) onto the leg and slowly clamp it down.”

And voila.

In Le Fay’s expert hands, the process looked easy. But as a newbie bander, it was a little nerve-wracking.

Le Fay provided calm guidance, instructing how to twist and give an extra little squeeze to ensure the band held.

“Seems perfectly closed. It won’t get snagged on anything. It won’t come off,” Le Fay said.

The researchers weighed each young owl. This particular bird weighed 142 grams — that’s about five ounces, or roughly the weight of a baseball.

Volunteers got to hold the owlettes and release them back into their homes — these burrows are located on land owned by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

It was 11-year-old Gabby Chase’s first time even seeing an owl up close. She giggled and petted the owl’s tiny head.

“ I thought it was pretty weird because I’ve never held an owl or seen an owl,” she said. “It felt like I’m holding, like, a little baby. It’s just all fuzzy, like a little cat. It kind of felt like that.”

Judy Johnson, left, helps 11-year-old Gabby Chase hold a baby burrowing owl on property managed by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Volunteers helped researchers band the baby owls so that the birds can be tracked throughout their lifetimes.

These tiny owls will help continue the 17-year recovery efforts.

Burrowing owls on the Umatilla Chemical Depot are doing so well, researchers around the world study them. Scientists are learning about any topic you can dream up, from the sounds they make, to the routes they fly,” Johnson said.

“The amount of information that comes out of this colony is unprecedented. It’s amazing,” Johnson said.

“It has contributed to nine different topics of discovery for the whole species.

“So it’s pretty incredible.”

From Jason Fraser

Red morph eastern screech owl looking for a nice cool spot to catch a break from this heatwave ☀️🦉☀️

From Gillian Byck Overholser

Feed me!

Can you see that the mother owl has actually shut her third (protective) eyelid known as the nictitating membrane because her owlet has gotten so close to her eyeball with that huge baby beak?!

I wanted to show you in the other photos how incredibly delicately she feeds the baby despite it's big beggarly ways!

A little fledgling Dumbi (Northern Masked Owl) in the first confirmed nest hollow on Dambimangari Country.

From Brad Leue

Unbelievably, the location that we had selected for our camp had also appealed to a pair of Northern Masked Owls as a site to raise their young.

In a paperbark alongside camp, supporting a magnificent hollow, a young fledgling was perched at the entrance with mum and dad chittering from the surrounding branches. A rare gift from the country, this was the first time a fledgling nest hollow had been recorded in Western Australia for this subspecies.

The Northern Masked Owl is listed as Vulnerable and very little is known about the subspecies in the Kimberley.

From SW Virginia Wildlife Center of Roanoke

Wink!

Meet BADO 2025-0134, the Barred Owl! (Strix varia)

This beautiful owl came to us the way many patients do: As a victim of a vehicle strike. Like most owls, they enjoy hunting by roadsides at night, since the open roadway is the perfect place to spot a scurrying rodent and swoop in for the kill!

Unfortunately, though, nature didn't give them the innate instinct to look both ways before flying into the road, leading to catastrophic consequences. After all, Barred Owls have existed for at least the last 11,000 years... Cars have only been around for about a century! This sudden change in their ecosystem is brand-new, geologically speaking.

Owls' heads are about 60% eyeball, meaning that any head injury probably also causes an eye injury. Such was the case for BADO 2025-0134, who came in with limited vision and numerous ocular injuries. Their left eye improved, but the right eye continued to decline, resulting in its removal through a procedure called evisceration.

For most raptors, losing an eye is a death sentence. They require both eyes for depth perception, which is critical when you spend your time hunting for prey on the wing!

For owls, though, their freaky ears (we say this endearingly) are the key to surviving with only one eye! One ear is set slightly lower on their head, while the other ear is set slightly higher. This causes a very slight difference in when sound waves hit each ear, allowing the owl to triangulate the exact location of their prey in complete darkness!

Missing an eye still isn't an ideal, but adult owls with experience hunting can and do adjust to their handicap with their super-powered hearing. And so far, BADO 2025-0134 is doing well in adjusting to their new "outlook" on life! With luck, they will be a candidate for release back to the wild very soon.

From Eaglewatch NL

LESSER SOOTY-OWL - Stable numbers

• NL: Kleine zwarte kerkuil (Tyto multipunctata)

• FR: Effraie piquetée

• Photo ©: Dash Huang

Queensland, Australia

The lesser sooty owl is an owl that lives in the wet tropics region of north eastern Queensland, Australia. It is part of the masked group of owls: an important part of the environment because they are efficient predators that keep down rodent populations.

The lesser sooty owl faces many threats such as habitat loss and fragmentation from logging, agriculture, tourism, mining, pine plantations, climate change and predation by domestic and feral animals. Even though the sooty owl is of least concern and its populations are currently stable.

From Pocono Wildlife Rehab

Our eastern Screech owl babies

Eastern screech owls typically leave the nest at about 28 days old. Even after leaving the nest, they remain dependent on their parents for food for an additional to 10 weeks so they will be with us for a while.

From Wildlife in Crisis

From Paul Norris

Came across this Saw-Whet Owl guarding his mouse in his tree

Saskatchewan, Canada.

From Leonard Kokck

First time seeing the Buffy Fish Owls sunning themselves on the grass/granite floor. Interesting behaviour! (15/6/25, Hampstead)