Winter Destinations and Habitats of Canadian Burrowing Owls

Abstract

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Breeding Dispersal of a Burrowing Owl from Arizona to Saskatchewan

“…Encounters of Burrowing Owls banded in Canada indicate two migration patterns, one for Burrowing Owls east of the Rocky Mountains through the Great Plains, and the second for British Columbia along the west coast of North America (Holroyd et al 2010). The dispersal movement of the female Burrowing Owl reported in this paper crossed between these two migration 'corridors' from Arizona to Saskatchewan.…”

“…Migration routes of Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia) have been poorly documented (Haug et al 1993) due to low (1.5%) band encounter rates (Harman and Barclay 2007). Burrowing Owls from the Canadian Great Plains migrate east of the Rockies, in a southeastern direction, based on 10 band encounters in the records of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) through 2008, and nine owls with transmitters located in wintering areas (Holroyd et al 2010). Encounters of 16 Burrowing Owls from British Columbia banded west of the Rocky Mountains revealed they migrated southwest to the U.S. Pacific Coast states (Holroyd et al 2010).…”

Apparent survival of adult Burrowing Owls that breed in Canada is influenced by weather during migration and on their wintering grounds

“…The nesting cycle lasted~12 wk, and the owls departed on fall migration between September and October (Poulin et al 2011). Burrowing Owls that breed in Canada migrate through the Great Plains and overwinter in southern Texas and central Mexico (James 1992, Duxbury 2004, Holroyd et al 2010, Poulin et al 2011.…”

“…Burrowing Owls nesting in Canada most likely migrate through Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma (Holroyd et al 2010) during the periods of September-October (Todd et al 2003) and March-April. We accessed information from the National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ dataaccesstools.html#climate) on the number of storm events (tornados, hail, and thunderstorm winds) in these 10 states during September-October (FallStorms) and March-April (SpringStorms).…”

“…We used the World Climate Research Programme and Global Climate Observing System's gauge-based monthly world precipitation map (0.58 3 0.58 grid; http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/ SOURCES/.WCRP/.GCOS/.GPCC/). We limited our analysis to an area bounded by 308N to 208N and 1178W to 948W (southern Texas to central and northern Mexico, the approximate wintering grounds of Canadian Burrowing Owls; Holroyd et al 2010). We used the European Space Agency's GlobCover Land Cover 2009 (ESA GlobCover Project, MEDIAS-France) GIS layer to further limit our analysis to grid-cell centers that overlapped suitable Burrowing Owl habitat (cropland, grassland, and sparse vegetation landcover types).…”