News of the Wild

Class Makes Owl at Home

The great horned owl, a common breeder in our region, doesn’t build its own nests but uses those abandoned by other large birds and even squirrels. Thanks to an energetic grade-school class in Grayslake, Illinois, however, two Lake County owls are living in luxury on the wooded edge of prime prairie hunting ground.

Last year, students at Prairie Crossing Charter School in Grayslake, Illinois, listened to Libertyville Township Open Space Field Manager Chris Slago discuss forestry at a career fair. What they remembered most about him was that he climbed trees. This year, a fourth-grade class wanted to know if he would put up nests they wished to make. To accommodate the large and adaptable great horned owl, the students shaped wire baskets three feet wide and then wrapped them with vines.

Slago took two nests to the edge of a restoration area in Liberty Prairie in January (great horned owls begin courting during this month). To the delight of the students who came to watch, he shimmied 45 feet up two trees to secure them.

While the oak tree nest went empty, a pair of owls moved into the cottonwood tree nest within only a month. Early in March, swathed in heavy work clothes, gloves, and protective glasses, Slago braved the wrath of the protective owl parents and climbed the cottonwood hoping to see the owlets. The parents made “a ton of noise,” but left him unscathed. He found two hatchlings. By the end of March, the third one emerged.

“Libertyville Township takes great pride in the preservation of open space,” says Slago. “Without a balance of predator and prey, the success of our efforts would be in jeopardy.” (The great horned owl is a major predator of rabbits, mice, voles, other birds, woodchucks, and squirrels.) And, he adds, “I believe that these students got to experience something that they only see on nature shows and in magazines, and they got to experience it first hand.”

— Elizabeth Riotto