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Home sweet barn

Lifted out of a travel carrier, the owl screeched and bit its handler's leather glove. The bird was returning to its historic home—and helping to save its species.

Home sweet barn

photo
Photos: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

Lifted out of a travel carrier, the owl screeched and bit its handler's leather glove.

The bird was returning to its historic home—and helping to save its species.

Barn owls are endangered in Illinois, pushed to the brink by pesticides, more tightly sealed barns, and the replacement of farms by shops and homes. Less than one-tenth of one percent of the state's natural prairie remains.

But the restoration of more than 1200 acres of prairie at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is giving Illinois its best shot at keeping and breeding the owls, says county ecologist Dan Thompson. Scientists have introduced two year-old males, both born in captivity, to an old red barn on the lab grounds.

Barn owls stand about a foot tall. Pepper-like black spots and brown freckles dust their tan bodies, and white down covers their flat, round faces. Their pink beaks form sharp Vs below intelligent black eyes.

The first owl struggled as it was taken out of its carrier. It flipped upside down and spread its foot-long wings, flashing its white underside. It screamed like a Velociraptor from the movie Jurassic Park. The second owl was no happier, clacking its beak in protest.

One at a time, Thompson carried the owls up a 20-foot ladder to a box mounted high on the inside of the barn wall. There they would stay, peering through a screen at the world outside, until accustomed to the sights and smells of the lab grounds.

“We chose Fermilab for the high-quality habitat and the abundance of open grassland,” Thompson says. “It is one of the longest contiguous pieces of grassland in the state. We also chose it for Fermilab's commitment to ecological health.” With much of its research machinery in underground tunnels, the lab is a haven for dozens of wildlife species and is one of six National Environmental Research Parks located on Department of Energy sites. Thompson plans to release more barn owls onto Fermilab property each year; the red barn is big enough to house a number of the birds. Next time, he says, they'll wear satellite transmitters so researchers can track their movements.

Kathryn Grim

 

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