One should always look for unexpected pleasures in life, and a little bit of research helps you find these gems. Given I am spending the week down in Fort Myers, Florida I decided to casually examine what other kinds of birds might be in the area … my surprise finding was I found myself near one of the hotbed capitals of Burrowing Owls. Good ole eBird, and specifically this range map of sightings led to my discovery (I use the Snowy Owl map, then change species and dates). Apparently the town of Cape Coral which is borders Fort Myers has made the Burrowing Owl their official “town bird” and even pays residents $250 to maintain proper habitat / burrows. (read CNN article).
My research indicated the Pelican Baseball Field in Cape Coral was the real focal point. Arriving shortly after sunrise our group found a huge number of burrows … including eight owls greeting the early morning light. I had even convinced non birders (my wife and our hosts) a sunrise trip would be a real treat. They were not disappointed!
Burrowing Owls of Cape Coral (videos follow still images)
Note: Significantly higher resolution images of all photos found upon my blog exist. For speed web page loading, lower res versions are used here. Contact me should you need higher resolution images.
Videos (note: in the second video you are seeing sand being tossed out of a hole by an owl in the actual act of burrowing)(video links for email subscribers: Vid1 … Vid2)
These photos made me smile and that is a good thing! Thank you!
Richard. I wish I would have learned about the Burrowing Owl site about 10 days earlier when Rich Gotz and I were birding Sw Florida.
Don: Not quite sure why I decided to research Burrowing Owls while on eBird, but I am glad I made the effort. When traveling I tend to look up birds that intrigue me on eBird which I would never see in the Boreal forest. It paid off this time. Hope you will get down to this area again some time.
Just so happy to see those sweet burrowing owls and those videos were great. I knew you would find wonderful Florida birds to photograph. Wish you were staying longer so there would be more bird pics.
Anyone in the Fort Myers area, should visit these owls. Use the link in my post to the Pelican Baseball Fields. The resulting eBird page which loads has a Google Maps link. In addition, visit early in the morning right after sunrise. Three other parties visited and file eBird reports on the same day as me, but came in the afternoon. They only saw one or two owls to my eight. Think like a bird. Owls are nocturnal. Breeding season for Burrowing Owls starts right about now (Feb. 1st), and in a few months whole families of owls will be present at sunrise. The burrows are well marked off with white stakes to prevent folks who are mowing causing problems.
Fantastic! I want to leave winter and go to Ft. Meyer’s.