In the Tri-Cities area, which doesn’t have many trees, hay stacks make an attractive nesting area that’s high above predators like coyotes.
As last year’s hay is sold before this year’s crop is available, the plastic covering hay stacks is peeled back, revealing nests of owlets. Hay haulers are encouraged to call Blue Mountain Wildlife volunteers, who arrive with cardboard boxes to pick up nests that typically have six to nine babies, but sometimes up to a dozen. Some of the owlets come in with their eyes still closed and their pink bodies showing through white down. By a month old they are starting to look like fluffy white balls. The tiniest owlets have to be fed bits of mice with forceps, but by about a week old, with training from caretakers, they can figure out how to grab bits of cut-up mice from a plate even with no sight. At about a month old, they can swallow a mouse whole and are downing 10 a day until they start to fly and venture out to trees at about two months old.
Even then, the fledged birds will return to the nesting boxes at the rescue center, eating mice that is left for them until they become good hunters. They start dispersing at about three months old, catching and eating several small rodents a day. It’s an important role in the ecosystem. Preserving that ecosystem is a mission for the Benton City satellite of Blue Mountain Wildlife.
We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. —Native American proverb
