Donelda Seymour, age 13, of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, for her question;

Is it true that some owls live in burrows?

It is true that the burrowing owl lives in a burrow. However, his home is a borrowed burrow. As far as we know, he does not do the main digging work for the tunnel. But he often enlarges it and cleans out the debris of former tenants. Also, a roomy nesting chamber is excavated and suitably furnished to serve as a nursery for the owlets.

This medium sized owl has the usual pussycat face, without the two perky ear tufts worn by most other owls. For an owl, his legs are rather long, which makes it easier for him to stride around on the ground around his burrow. His feathery outfit is basically soft brown, attractively speckled with white. His wings are folded smoothly along his sides. However, he can fly well and as a rule he migrates a considerable distance between his summer and winter homes.

This unusual owl enjoys life on the prairies of North America and his range extends south as far as the wide savannas and pampas lands of Argentina. He is a very sociable fellow who shares life with a colony of friends and relatives    and usually his colony shares an underground city with a tribe of ground squirrels. In North America, he often shares a prairie dog town.

Prairie dogs are dedicated diggers and they often abandon old burros for new ones. Snakes, assorted field. mice and various other tenants move into the vacated premises. A colony of burrowing owls moves into the deserted suburbs of a prairie dog town for the summer season. The owls and prairie dogs live in different neighborhoods underground. But above ground they often share the sunshine together and stand side by side, staring fixedly at the scenery.

Most owls doze through the day and their vision is rather poor in bright sunlight. Not so the burrowing owl. His daytime vision is very good. His owlish eyes, of course, are in the front of his face and he has to turn his head to look around. Sometimes he twists his neck so far that he seems in danger of unscrewing his head from his shoulders. Human visitors find him a comical sight. Standing there, erect in his neatly speckled coat, he continues to stare and stare and stare.

The parent birds usually enlarge a burrow, tossing out showers of debris. They either enlarge or excavate a nesting chamber at the end of a tunnel, perhaps ten feet below the surface. As a rule, the floor is carpeted with an inch or so of tamped down grasses. The chamber has to be roomy because there may be nine eggs. The chicks hatch in about three weeks and the owlets are just as attractive and even more comical than their parents.

The burrowing owl is a bird of prey who dines on freshly caught meat. During the day, he may chase a few grasshoppers. But like a true owls he does his main dining after dark. A few times during the night he emerges and files silently around in search of field mice and such. He takes his food to his downstairs dining room    and his burrow is cluttered with a messy assortment of food scraps.