Farm Bulletin: Barn Owl Update

In a previous post, contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm wrote of his discovery of a barn owl chick that had fallen out of its nest. It seemed unhurt, so he returned it to its siblings, not without some amount of effort. Here is an update.

The parents have raised a total of three young, including, presumably, the one crammed back in the barrel. The owlets now sport their immature plumage, with just wisps of down lingering.  They are now flying in and out of their nest box, but not yet graceful in flight. Physically, though, they are at their prettiest at this point. What a difference a fortnight makes.

Farm Bulletin: A Small Act of Kindness

Working with nature in its cyclical processes is the main occupation of a successful farmer. Occasionally it means choosing to intervene in its harsher aspects, as contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm describes.

Yesterday morning, we were greeted by this barn owl chick. It is just beginning to develop its immature plumage on its wings. They are hideous and lack charm until they fledge.

It had been tossed or fallen out of the nest. Sort of hard to say. Most years we find a dead chick or two on the barn floor. Earlier this week, a much smaller chick lay dead beneath a nest in our other barn.

Not relishing the task of putting it back up in the box, and cautious lest it had an illness, we waited until mid-afternoon. Still alive and punchy, show no signs of malaise, we decided it was worth returning to the nest. We grabbed it, scaled the ladder and jammed it back into the box. Our effort was rewarded by a horrible and sustained hissing from the other occupants. Checked this morning and there is no sign of the beast on the barn floor, so it is probably fine.

Barn owls are excitable and humorless creatures, make a mess of the place and equipment with their casts and urine, but seeing their ghostly forms over the fields at night makes them tolerable companions.

Farm Bulletin: A Peaceable Kingdom

In the middle of the frenzy that is the summer harvest, this week contributor Anthony Boutard stops to remind us about the other creatures that call Ayers Creek Farm home, and to ponder his and Carol's role as caretakers of the land.

The waxing gibbous moon rises in the late afternoon and reaches its apogee during first half of the night. As the moon develops its belly, it provides more light for the coyotes as they move about the farm. They often chatter, a kind of "I'm here, where are you?" mixture of barks and yips. They also have their choral moment which starts out with calls and responses, followed by a rising crescendo of barks, verging on a howl. It ends abruptly. They call mostly at night. Interestingly, their conversations are never overtly aggressive; we never hear snarling or fighting among them.

Coyotes are furtive animals, though in the spring when food is short they are less reticent to show themselves. Often a coyote will shadow the tractor as we mow the berry rows, pouncing on the fleeing voles (left). At the southern end of the berries is a small canyon with a dense thicket of native roses along its eastern flank. In early April we spotted four very small coyote pups along the edge of the roses, which we mistook for rabbits at first sight. By May, they were bigger and given to playing outside of the briars, and the count rose to eight pups.  That is on the high side for a litter. During this time, the mother hunted all through the day.

Through the summer months, the coyote diet is almost entirely fruit. They eat a lot of cherries early in the summer, followed by prunes, blackberries and then grapes. This summer fructivory performs a valuable service for us by cleaning up the fallen fruit. The energetic demands are lower in the summer, so the coyotes' "Dick Gregory" diet makes sense. In addition, the dry summer soils make it hard to excavate rodent nests. Come the autumn rains, they will shift back to rodent hunting. Regardless of the season, birds are an insignificant part of a coyote's diet.    

As organic farmers, we judge the health of our land by the health of the predator populations. In addition to the eight coyote pups, our barn owls raised five owlets (right) and fields are thick with tree frogs. When we see good numbers of weasels, spiders, snakes, dragon flies and lacewings, we are comforted knowing there is a shadow productivity, a separate harvest, that works in concert with our efforts to grow nutritious food.

In the legal world of organic agriculture, it takes three years to earn certification. At the ecological level, it generally takes a farm many more years to recover from the chemical assault of modern agriculture. Recolonizing the land with a diverse guild of predators is a slow process, and we still see holes in the structure after 12 years of managing this patch above Ayers Creek. For example, we have only seen one western fence lizard here, and we should have a good mix of these reptiles. We suspect the absence of a corridor for recolonization leaves us bereft these animals. Someday we will wake up and see some lizards, and know the farm is a little bit more complete.

You can find the Boutards most Sundays from 10 am until 2 pm at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market. For a complete schedule of Willamette Valley farmers' markets, along with maps and links, click here.

Bulletin from the Farm: Owl School

Anthony Boutard, the bard of Ayers Creek, has graciously put me on his mailing list, and I have to say that it's an honor and a privilege to read his reflections on life at his farm in Gaston. I'm trying to encourage him to post these to a blog, so we'll see if he jumps into that particular pool.

Until then, this is from his latest dispatch:

"Barn owl school started this week. You know the semester has started when you enter the barn and the ground is littered with dead mice and voles. We entered the barn early one overcast morning this week and disrupted class. The adults skedaddled into the box, leaving three of the immature birds fluttering around the barn in a state of panic. The fourth was calm and just watched us. The young birds have their immature plumage. It is similar to the parents', but distinctly darker, especially on the back. They are proportionately taller and prettier, except when they open their beaks and utter their plaintive wail. They scream all night, and the nocturnal cacophony won't cease until October.

"The parents apparently teach them to hunt by bringing in living rodents and dropping them on the ground. Owls only hunt living prey, so if the unfortunate rodent suffers cardiac arrest on the way to the barn, it is dropped and ignored. It may be that the owls' eyes can only pick up moving prey in their dark night life. When hunting over open areas, their call is a metallic, nondirectional clicking sound that increases in frequency. We suspect it is used to confuse and flush their prey, so the owl can detect rodent's movement.

"Barn owls have a lifespan of about 30 years, yet, according to owl experts, typically live on average only three years or so. A few years ago, we found the feathers of a barn owl scattered as though it had been killed by an accipiter, probably a goshawk. The high attrition is probably due to natural causes, as we have never seen one killed on the road. Although they tend to be a bit high-strung, there is a pair that generally nests in the siren tower of the St. Paul Fire Department. When the siren goes off it is painful to hear, yet those owls return each year. No end to wonderment."

Is that blog-worthy or what? If you have words of encouragement that I can pass on, leave a comment by clicking on the "comments" button just below this post and I'll get it to him. In the meantime, you can catch Anthony and Carol live and in person at their booth at the Hillsdale Farmers Market on Sundays from 10 am till 2 pm. Write on!