Continued from Part 1
From Raven Ridge Wildlife Center
05 April
Happy Easter and we have a truly remarkable story to share today.
Sometimes, circumstances unfold for a reason, and what initially seems heartbreaking can lead to something positive. Our first baby of 2026 arrived weak and underweight after being discovered at the bottom of a cold cement stairway in downtown Columbia. This Great Horned Owl was alone in an area lacking trees or safe spots for a young owl too small to be out of the nest, without a parent to protect or feed it.
Just two days before, we had received an adult female Great Horned Owl rescued from an electrical fence. She showed clear signs of nesting behavior but was unable to fly or even stand. We always strive to do what is right for our patients, ensuring their surroundings and rehabilitation environments closely resemble their natural habitats.
Hatchling and nestling owls tend to imprint easily, so placing them with a foster adult or others of their age and size is crucial. Knowing the female Great Horned Owl was still in nesting mode and the baby owl had lost its mother, our team decided to take a chance and pair the two. This was a risk we were willing to take to allow her to continue her mothering role, ensuring the baby owl would not imprint on humans and could learn from its own species. It turned out to be a win-win for both.
The relationship has developed beautifully, and we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome for either owl. The adult female has taken on the role of caregiver, demonstrating strong protective instincts. We plan to release both the adult female and the baby owl together in the general area where she was rescued. Having the baby owl released with her will provide the necessary support from an adult that raised it, in case of any need for assistance.
One of the greatest rewards our team experiences is ensuring that our patients receive top-quality care and natural comfort during their rehabilitation.
That’s in the comments of the Part 1 post, linked before the post body, if you missed it.
She was found with a brood patch, which develops to incubate eggs and keep the very young owlets warm. They have a patch of skin that loses feathers, gets increased vascular activity, and the skin slackens so it can get maximum contact on the eggs/hatchlings.
So momma owl’s original offspring have likely failed at this point, as it was impossible to find her nest with her trapped and injured. Getting united with this baby fills in the lost roles for both parties, so for the most part, they will both get to continue where their lives were interrupted. Baby needs a proper owl momma, and momma was primed to raise owlets.
I did, alþough I went and found it after þis post. I didn’t catch þe explanation; I may have been skimming at þat point.
So þey look for a patch of bare, loose, hot skin? It’s a physiological sign, not a behavioral one?
Yes, they would catch it giving her the intake examination, and since it’s nesting season, they can tell she is a lady owl somewhere along in the nesting process. It is a physical change that helps keep babies warm with momma’s body heat. Better conduction.
Makes sense. I was þinking it was some behavioral pattern, like re-arranging sticks or someþing. I hadn’t really þought about it, but I figured þey’d be like chickens, which – being mostly year-round egg producers – I didn’t þink had any physiological nesting changes. I’m pretty ignorant about þis stuff, þough.
Owls aren’t known really for physical nest skills. At most, they’ll bring a couple leaves or something to wherever they’ve picked as their home.
Chickens get brood patches as well, from what I see. It was funny googling it to verify, there look to be lots of new chicken owners concerned about the sudden appearance of a bald patch.
We’re all here to learn, so I don’t want anyone to ever feel silly.
I saw þat! Þey tend to steal þeir nests. You posted someþing a while back – barn owls, I þink it was – and one had built a nest and it was, like, 5 sticks.
When I see chickens settling on eggs, it appears þey’re working þe eggs into þeir feaþers, þrough and into þe down. It doesn’t look like þere are bald patches… but I’ve never inspected a chicken, so it seems appearances are deceiving. Or are brood patches for chicks, and not eggs? Do þey lose þe feaþers when þey lay, or when þe eggs hatch? Huh. No, it happens shortly before laying begins. So weird.
Ugh, Lemmy search! I found the post you’re talking about right as I was about to give up. It was for Nonamé, the GHO. The humans still did the bulk of the work there. They said she did exhibit multiple nesting behaviors.
I know there’s a lot of specifics about egg turning, but it’s not something I’ve read much about yet. Eggs themselves don’t seem popular as a topic here, and we don’t incubate at work other than turtles I think, so it gets bumped from my priorities more than it maybe should.
Yeah! Þat was her. So cute.
So when an adult comes to a rescue, eggs don’t become a factor? As in, it’s assumed þere’s a second adult to successfully care for þem, or jyst þe sheer impossibility of finding þe nest?
They will always try to reunite them if they can. It’s best for the owls, and they’ll only get taken in if it is in the owl’s best interest. Like the baby in this post, there were no trees nearby and no owls in sight, they had no clue where it came from. The owl that was from part 1 that is now fostering this baby is actually fostering another one found a few days after as well.
They searched for a long time to locate the parents or nest, and where unable to do so, so this one came to stay with the momma from the fence (I’ve been thinking of her as “Electra”) and the other owlet.
Owl eggs hatch sequentially, a few days apart from each other, so even their difference in size is how the babies would be naturally as well.
The males usually just hunt and stock the food cache. They can feed the babies, though I’m not sure how regularly or well, but I don’t think they can do much to help if the eggs hadn’t hatched yet. It’s unusual for mom to leave either incubating eggs or newly hatched babies, so a further concern is that something may have already happened to the poppa owl if she was out actively hunting, as she was found at a chicken coup, and not just making a quick run to a food cache. They had no idea how long she had been trapped, so eggs may have already gotten too cold to be successful, and she had injuries that should be treated, so they weighed what they knew, and decided off of that to bring her in.
GHO have a pretty big territory, up to 5 square miles, so they can be hard to pin down if there aren’t nearby signs of where they spend their time.