Thursday, February 27, 2014

Baiting Owls

When Russ and I were living in Madison, Wisconsin in the
late 70s, there was an invasion of northern owls into the Duluth area, and a
lot of my friends drove up one weekend to see their lifer Boreal, Great Gray,
and Northern Hawk Owls. I was sick with the flu and missed the trip, but from
then on always associated northeastern Minnesota with incredible owls. After
Russ earned his Ph.D. and had a few job offers, I lobbied for the one up here
because of all those owls.

I’m not the only one who equates Duluth winters
with wondrous owls—year after year, people from every state and several foreign
countries come up, hiring guides or combing the Sax-Zim Bog on their own, all
in search of owls. In 1998, three men competed inseen any bad effects, but many impartial observers have witnessed
owls hurt or killed directly or indirectly due to baiting, and so the preponderance
of data is clearly against the practice. The Raptor Center in St. Paul, the OwlFoundation, the Raptor Education Group, and Project SNOWstorm, world-class organizations with a
thorough understanding of owls, are all on record opposing baiting, except by
licensed bird banders or to trap individual owls to remove them from a
dangerous situation or bring them to a rehab facility.

Baiting owls with fake mice is a horrible practice, immediately harmful to the owls. Owls cast pellets consisting of felted fur and all the bones and other indigestible matter in their prey. These pellets are formed in their lower stomach—the muscular gizzard—and must pass through the glandular stomach and esophagus