Burrowing owls living in a housing development in Florida. Which is indeed fun.
For there’s a kiddies’ novel by, erm….name won’t come to me…..exactly about burrowing owls on a development in Florida. Rather a fun novel in fact.
Burrowing owls living in a housing development in Florida. Which is indeed fun.
For there’s a kiddies’ novel by, erm….name won’t come to me…..exactly about burrowing owls on a development in Florida. Rather a fun novel in fact.
Little known fact: you’re never more than ten feet away from a burrowing owl. They swoop through the soil to take moles and earthworms, and are active day and night because it’s always dark down there.
Hoot, by Carl Hiaasen.
I like his adult fiction – reminds me a bit of the great Elmore Leonard.
I have never seen a burrowing owl (which is probably the whole point) during my many trips to Florida. However the wolf spiders are bloody scary.
Threatened Hispaniolan parakeets have adapted to urban living in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic.
I think I recognise those bastards. They’ve also adapted to living in the trees in my street. They ravaged the plants on my terrace this spring. They chomped all the twigs off the bougainvilleas & flew off with them to build nests. So instead of a nice display of colours I’m left with bald branches. And they shit everywhere. They’re right they’re bloody threatened. But but I can’t get at ’em.
If you’re bothered by green parakeets, BiS, it’s likely they’re Rose-ringed Parakeets which now infest large parts of southern England (mainly along the Thames) – I’ve also seen them in Düsseldorf and Rome, though WikiP doesn’t think they’re in Spain (yet) There’s a romantic tale that the British ones escaped from the lot where they were filming The African Queen, but it’s an urban myth.
Do you have Rabilargos where you are? They’re a lovely bird, but a major pest of olive groves and vineyards.
though WikiP doesn’t think they’re in Spain (yet)
Then Wiki’s behind the times. They’ve been here for at least ten years in noticeable numbers, whatever they are. I’ll let you know when I do the post mortems.
BiS: oven, or barbeque?
I have heard anecdotal tales that the Norwrgian blue is quite tasty when lightly barbecued?
One wonder is the same applies to green parakeets.
(Wood pigeon/ cushie doo is quite palatable when casseroled)
There’s a university in south Florida whose mascot is the burrowing owl (because it used to host a large population of the critters). The university was partially built on an old air force base (had long parking lots that used to be runways) and was adjacent to the local municipal airport, so there was a large swath of land between the parking lot outskirts and the airport left wild that was habitat to tortoises and burrowing owls. The university grew and decided that it needed a football team to bring in money. Being a small urban school surrounded by development, it lacked land to build a stadium, well, except for the wild burrowing owl habitat. The campus enviro groups went up in arms over it, but instead of trying to find a mutually beneficial solution, they only succeeded in postponing the inevitable by a couple years. The new, unknown, football team had to play their games in other schools’ stadiums, and this was not generating the ticket revenue desired, so, as everyone with a brain knew was going to happen, the owl habitat was plowed up and a new stadium built. So much for the burrowing owls and tortoises.