Animal Rescuers Restore Owlets to Batavia Nest

Everyone loves a happy ending when family members are reunited.

That scene played out in Batavia on Sunday, except it was a mother Great Horned Owl reunited with two baby owlets that had fallen out of their nest a week earlier.

Pam Weber of Batavia discovered the infant owls in her yard after they’d apparently fallen from their nest. After consulting with a local veterinarian, the owls were brought to the Fox Valley Wildlife Center for rehabilitation.

For a week Ashley Flint, the wildlife center director, and her colleagues nursed the young owls to health feeding them chicken livers and caring for their beaks and feathers. Flint said the owls, which were about the size of tennis balls, had to be fed every two hours.

The crew had to work quickly to prepare the owlets to return to their nest.

“They grow up fast and imprint really easily," Flint said. "They can associate humans with food so it’s important to have nature take its course, so the sooner we got them back to their mother, the better.”

Flint dismissed the idea that animals will reject their young if they smell a human scent as “an old wives’ tale.” 

“Animals typically reject their young if they have an injury of some kind or a defect," she said. "They don’t want to expend energy on taking care of something that most likely won’t survive."

The Reunion

Within a week Flint was able to contact someone who could climb a tree with the baby owls and restore them to their nest.

Flint said she was not positive the owls would take their babies back, because, while territorial, she thought the adult owls might not be in the area any longer. But, after the owlets were replaced in the nest, she soon saw the mother owl with her young.

Weber has also been keeping an eye on the owl family. She said she often watches the mother care for her young while, what she assumes is the father, stands sentry.

"I'll hear one of them approach the nest in the evening and call out to the others that it's dad returning with food and not a predator," Weber said.

If the mother owl did not return for her young Flint said they would recapture them and raise them at the wildlife center.

Flint speculates the owlets will remain with their mother through the summer and learn how to hunt and survive.

Flint’s experience with the owlets is nothing new. She said people bring all kinds of injured animals to her wildlife center, although she said it’s a rarity when a raptor like an owl is brought in. Most of the animals they treat are songbirds or small mammals, she said.

Birds of Batavia

The Batavia area was also the site of a highly-publicized avian family separation last year. In May 2011, by their parents near Batavia when their nest fell 80 feet from the ground during a storm. The eaglets were nursed back to health and near Utica last November.