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Wednesday, March 29, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
Flabbulated owls
really get around
My old pal from Sisters
Country Conrad Weiler and
his dear wife, Joan, hit me
with a wonderful surprise a
week or so back. They sent
me an email from Panama.
There’s ol’ Conrad, stand-
ing in the bow of a ship car-
rying him and his lovely wife
through the Mira Florues
Lock, just before they went
on a tour of the Gamboa
National Forest.
As I sat in front of my
faithful old MacBook OS10
reading the mail and wishing
I were there with them, the
name Gamboa went bounc-
ing through my ancient brain
and with it came an image
of Rebecca Goggins, Forest
Service researcher.
Through banding baby
flammulated owls, Rebecca
and other researchers discov-
ered the owls spend their win-
ters in Panama, principally in
the Gamboa National Forest.
Then up popped Jane
Stevens, retired wildlife
rehabber living in Sisters
with her husband, Bill. Jane
was holding a baby flam that
a wood-cutter presented to
her. He found it in a tree cav-
ity in a dead lodgepole he
felled for firewood near Lava
Top Butte, on the east side of
Hwy. 97.
The little flammulated’s a
ringer for the Western screech
owl, but has jet-black eyes.
Screech owls have yellow
eyes. While screeches live
on small rodents, flams don’t
give a hoot about mammals;
they live on moths, beetles
and crickets.
Dead trees, especially
snags, carry a red flag for
firefighters, but they also
have “Home” written all over
them for woodpeckers, small
birds and even bats. When
snags are removed from the
forest without consideration
as essential wildlife habitat,
that creates serious problems
for cavity nesters.
When an area with lots
of bug- or fire-killed trees
is opened for wood-cutting
it should be inventoried for
wildlife trees (trees with cavi-
ties already in them) and those
trees marked as wildlife trees.
It also becomes the respon-
sibility of the wood-cutter to
look over each tree he wishes
to cut to ensure it isn’t already
keeping someone else warm
and cuddly.
Reliving those wonderful
days working with Jane and
the USFS on owls and wild-
life habitat I began to laugh,
then laugh even harder as
more memories came flood-
ing back, and at that point my
wife, Sue, became alarmed
and came into my office to
see what was going on…
“Do you remember the day
OSP called me and asked if I
would fly the baby flams Jane
was caring for back to La
Grande…?” I said. Then Sue
started to laugh…
It seems a different wood-
cutter in La Grande took the
baby flams from a nesting
cavity near where he was cut-
ting wood, and brought them
home, but his neighbor turned
him in for stealing them from
Mother Nature. OSP cited
him, took the baby owls away
from him, then formed a
patrol car relay and sent them
overland to rehabber Jane
Stevens in Bend.
Then the next day, Rebecca
Goggins, the researcher who
was studying the owls found
them missing and called OSP.
They realized what they’d
done and told her not to
worry, they’d get them right
back. OSP then called me and
I ran over to Jane’s, grabbed
up the owls, and headed for
the airport. I called my young
friend Jeff Cooney, who was
studying to be a wildlife vet-
erinarian to see if he’d like to
go along.
I contacted a pal who
owned a lovely little Aeronca
Chief airplane I loved to fly,
and Jeff, the two baby flams,
and I took off for La Grande.
Rebecca met us at the airport
and she and Jeff whisked the
babies back to their tree cav-
ity home where they were
accepted by their parents.
Little did the parents real-
ize the Great Adventure the
two nestlings had been on in
less than 24 hours. A 150-mile
relay in patrol cars, then to a
wildlife rehabber, then packed
off into a noisy airplane for
another 150-mile trip back
home and waiting parents.
Who says owls don’t give a
hoot...
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PHOTO BY JIM ANDERSON
Jeff Cooney with baby flammulated owls.
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