Hi Brian, great to hear from you, and thanks for the constructive feedback! It was probably eight years ago, I would guess, that I took part in a tracking class you led in Heron. Good to see your name again!

I was pretty excited to see the tracks and signs in the thicket – especially the bobcat tracks and the porcupine feeding sign.

Great point about predators, too. It can be easy to forget that raptors can be not only hunters but also prey. According to the Birds of the World account, a variety of larger raptors prey on adult long-eared owls, including great horned owls and red-tailed hawks. Nest predators include raccoons, Accipiter hawks, and bull snakes.

Have a great winter, and I hope to see you out in the field again one of these days!

As a fellow researcher, I must say this is a very good article in it’s diversity of the general topic of the Long – eared owl research by ORI! Like the professional scientific reports we must write, you covered not only the basics, but also wove in details about the owls themselves, behavior, camouflage, roosting, nesting, and hunting behavior, as well as good habitat component coverage with Latin names of the vegetation. As a professional tracker, I really enjoyed the details about what critters you guys found sign of while crawling through the thickets, and the realistic humor about snow dumping down the necks of researchers! Been there, done that. 🙂 Would have liked to see you add a pellet photo and a bit of info on what birds and mammals prey on Long-eared owls. All in all, very well done! 🙂 – Brian Baxter, Silver Cloud Associates, LLC – Outdoor Ed. Programs, Libby, Montana.

Thanks very much, Kate! Yes, that’s exactly right – long-eared owls are what we saw roosting in the tamarisks at Anza Borrego quite a few years ago.