Burrowing Owls

Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife will host the 24th Annual Burrowing Owl Festival on Feb. 28, bringing conservation groups, tours and family activities to Rotary Park.

Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife will host a Southwest Florida Birding Specialty Tour on Saturday, Feb. 28 as part of the 24th Annual Burrowing Owl Festival. The four-hour guided tour runs from 7 to 11 a.m., with participants asked to arrive by 6:45 a.m. at Rotary Park, 5505 Rose Garden Road.The tour will travel by bus to multiple birding locations in Cape Coral and surrounding areas, with short walks expected at select stops. Organizers say participants may see burrowing owls and other bird species common to Southwest Florida, including bald eagles, herons and egrets.Tickets cost $70 and include admission to the Burrowing Owl Festival. Advance purchase is required through ccfriendsofwildlife.org. The festival’s Wildlife and Environmental Expo will also take place Feb. 28 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Rotary Park, featuring tours, vendors, speakers and family activities.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission invites the public to three upcoming webinars, where staff will present draft revisions to the Species Conservation Measures and Permitting Guidelines for Florida Burrowing Owls.FWC staff will present draft revisions to the guidelines during the scheduled webinars, with each of the three online workshops providing the public with the opportunity to give feedback and offer suggestions.

For the 5th year, Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife held their Ground Owl Day at Pelican Baseball Complex in Cape Coral. A short ceremony celebrated the ground owl seeing its shadow and adding 6 more weeks of winter to Southwest Florida.

Passionate defenders of Cape Coral’s burrowing owls are livid now that tractors are clearing debris from Hurricane Ian out of the city’s canals and possibly crushing dozens of owl and gopher tortoise burrows.

Pasha Donaldson, vice president of the Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife, does not know how many of the cape’s 3,500 burrowing owls fared during Hurricane Ian. But she does know of a way residents can help the animals that surivived the storm remain alive.“Please don’t put your trash on top of” their burrows, Donaldson said. That’s “that big thing for people dumping trash.”The burrowing owl occupies not just self-dug burrows, but can make a home in the ends of a drainage culvert underneath driveways, underneath a porch, or where a post used to be. Donaldson said to trap the owls down in their homes for the days or weeks it takes for the piles of trash created by Hurricane Ian could be deadly.

Burrowing owls and gopher tortoises have been either discovered on, or been brought to, one of 48 residential lots where nothing will ever be built. These plots of land have been purchased by members of a wildlife group establishing a patchwork sanctuary for the animals throughout the northwestern part of town. Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife has spent about $450,000 total purchasing four dozen plot and are negotiating to buy five more. The 300-member group has amassed the citizen sanctuary since 2002 and focus on burrowing owls and gopher tortoises because they both dig into the ground for protection. Most of the lots are easy-to-dig-in sandy spoil dredged up from the bay bottom when the city was created in the 1950s.

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