Great sighting of the Short-eared Owl on Ahmanson Ranch. Here’s a little bit of natural history information on this species that might be helpful for seeing it again at that location. Short-eared Owls (and Long-eared Owls too for that matter) will continue to use their same daytime roost site, IF NOT DISTURBED. Most of us find Short-eared's and Long-eared's by flushing them from their roosts.. Flushing them once or twice generally won’t cause them to abandon the site, but repeated flushing will. So generally when you flush them off a roost just back up slowly, mark the site in your mind, and go the other way. Depending on how dense the vegetation is around the birds you can come back at a later date and scan the site with a scope and catch them roosting quietly.
I’m reminded of the ground roost (they will use low branches on dense trees too) of several Short-ear's Bill Shanbrom, Rick Ridgeway and I found a number of years ago at Lake Casitas. As soon as we flushed the owls (by pure chance) in the middle of the morning we knew that was their daytime roost. So we backed up and went the other direction. Several days later we came back with a scope, we knew where the roost was, and were able, from a safe distance, observe the birds sitting quietly on the ground together. And we were able to do this for about a week……and to show others the owls without disturbing them.
But they say all good things come to an end eventually…… By chance a novice birder happened to stumble across the roost, and of course unintentionally flushed the birds. Unfortunately in this case the individual came back day after day to purposefully flush the birds because they enjoyed watching them fly. They told us this with great excitement. Didn’t take long before the owls abandoned the site.
Just a heads up..a little caution can pay off and others may be able to enjoy the owl. And who knows, maybe it’ll be joined by several others.
