The Young and Restless (and Feathered)

If you haven’t seen or read about these young raptors in DNR’s Georgia Wild enewsletter, it’s worth repeating here.

First up, it was a good spring for barred owls in the middle Georgia yard of Chris and Linda May. A nest box the Griffin couple put up five years ago in a large tulip poplar outside their home has seen a number of barred owl broods come and go.

Yet this year the adult pair raised three owlets. (Linda, outreach coordinator of DNR’s Wildlife Conservation Section, calls the fluff-and-stuff young “floofs.”) The last of the owlets fledged in early May.

But the family will stay together several more months, Linda said, with the young honing their flying skills and continuing to beg for food from their parents.

Meanwhile, below the Fall Line, this American kestrel chick wasn’t about to let a little leg banding interfere with lunch.

While the banding by DNR to monitor these native falcons in middle and south Georgia is temporarily unsettling for young kestrels, senior wildlife biologist Nathan Klaus said one determined chick encountered by wildlife technician Aydreyel Schuh “absolutely refused to drop” an eastern fence lizard one of its parents had delivered to the nest box.

Which just further confirms that kestrels are nothing if not spunky.

One more note: If you love wildlife and you’re not already subscribed to Georgia Wild, you are missing out. Each monthly issue is chock full of stories and updates about the state’s native animals and plants and work to conserve them. Each is issue is also free.

Need we say more?

Well, actually, yes: You can subscribe and read back issues of the newsletter at georgiawildlife.com/GaWild.

Top: Three barred owl floofs and a box in Griffin (Linda May/GaDNR)

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