Just a wee little first hand trivia follow-up story to add here to the
"Banded Burrowing Owls" thread for your interest / amusement on this yet
another glorious dark rainy pre-apocalyptic day :-))

Maybe ten or a few more years ago while conducting marine mammal and
seabird surveys off the California coast aboard the now retired from NOAA, R/V
"McArthur" (actually, that ship was sold some years back to that nefarious
privatized quasi-military organization called "Blackwater" you may remember
hearing of ... for 'training purposes' they say -- they must have been
desperate to buy that affectionate but wretched piece of....., oh, never mind,
but it did end up seeing 'action' off Iraq I think). Anyway, Oct-Nov, and
well off the California coast, Burrowing Owls started showing up onboard,
three at least, maybe more, but never more than one at a time nor more than
one present at a time, and one of those in fact may have been banded but I
can't remember now for sure. Long time ago, having amassed 40 years and
countess tens of thousands hours of at sea time, oceans everywhere,
...cruises all run together at this stage for this 'ol timer sea dog. Origin, who
knows..., could have been Interior BC as this thread and banded bird
recovery data suggests.

One of those Burrowing Owls remained onboard for several days where it
could be found here and there on deck, once in the engine room, but one of it's
favorite 'perches' was in fact on the foremast on the tippy-top of the
quite flimsy free spinning wind vane, where it would just sit there and twirl
around and around as the relative wind shifted with respect to shifting
courses by the ship. Sometimes, it would spin around and around quite fast,
the Burrowing Owl sitting tight for this free amusement park ride ...cute.
This was all quite amusing for those of us on watch atop the wheel house
on the flying bridge as the days ticked by where we often had the owl right
there at eye level only about 50 feet away (nice photo ops btw!).

This Burrowing Owl seemed to make itself quite at home and in fact proved
to be an accomplished hunter. At sea, hunting what exactly, and when you
may wonder?!? Night time it seems, days all day were spent aboard the ship,
but come early morning and scouting about on the bow , there were often
little bits of birdy body parts strewn about on the bow & deck below the
foremast; wings, tails, black legs and feet, gutsy bits, and assorted mostly
brownish-blackish feathers, all of which appeared to have formerly belonged
once to living Leach's Storm Petrels we believed, and which were certainly
the most ubiquitous and common storm petrel species (only storm petrel
actually) in those offshore areas we were working at the time, thus suggesting
these hunting sortes were conducted at night only. Seems like a pretty
amazing feat at all for a Burrowing Owl to out and capture storm petrels at
sea, then bring them back to the ship to rip apart and eat. Peregrine Falcons
do that quite often and commonly, but only in the day time, and a matter
of routine really since they seem to subsist quite well during extended
sojourns hundreds of miles at sea where they can easily hop from to ship to
ship to ship, ...indefinitely, ...but Burrowing Owls?!? Wow!

That was the cruise as I recall that we ran over a huge partially
submerged log in the mouth of the
Columbia River soon after sailing from Astoria, OR at the start of the
cruise in late July or August. I remember I was standing on the bow at the
time, and only spotted the log literally at the very last second before
impact, no time to even react much less warn the bridge, then the bumpity-bump,
rumble rumble, I could feel through the deck when we drove right over that
thing. No worse for wear it seemed, and off we went into the wild blue
yonder of the NE Pacific for a few months. Turned out though, that collision
did indeed do some damage to the one of the rudders but which we didn't
really figure out until confirmed a couple months later in this particular
cruise. With steering abilities continuing to go down hill, and the
Burrowing Owl still aboard, we pulled into the lee of San Clemente Island in the
SoCal Bight one day and anchored about a half-mile off to send divers over to
inspect the hull and rudder. Yes indeed, one of the rudders was just
plain gone, having over the course of time and countless thousands of turns,
wear and tear, finally just gave up the beast and fell off. Deep-ixed and to
this day still sitting on the bottom of the ocean somewhere. It was
during this nearshore (island) anchorage, the Burrowing Owl saw it's first
chance for escape and land in days, and was last seen flying off to San Clemente
Island and never to be seen again.

As for the damaged / missing rudder, the first warning should have been
with the incident in the Columbia River, but then, it was still attached, just
apparently damaged but the ship still drivable. So, off and away we went,
weeks, months, and gradually steerage abilities were eroding until
finally, the thing just simply fell off. Once confirmed missing off San Clemente
Island, thus only one functioning rudder, then we definitely had a safety
issue that needed immediate attention, so off to Long Beach we hobbled, and
into dry dock for a few days and repairs.

I have seen other Burrowing Owls way out there at sea over the years,
usually during the months of October and November, so what at least this shows,
regardless of their origin, they definitely have a post-breeding affinity
for heading for the coast, especially Oregon to southern California to Baja.

Richard Rowlett
Bellevue (Eastgate), WA
Pterodroma AT aol.com