Diamond Bar kids build homes for burrowing owls

Burrowing owl

You’ve heard of volunteers building homes for homeless people. Well, 15 third-graders from Diamond Bar went the nature route this month and built a home for homeless birds. Because birds need homes, too.

These birds, called burrowing owls, are not your average birds. They are threatened with extinction. And like people, being homeless doesn’t help matters. Burrowing owls prefer to inhabit other animals’ homes. Like squatters, they cozy up inside an abandoned burrow left by a prairie dog or a ground squirrel. The method served them well until the lack of suitable habitat in Southern California produced an owl housing shortage.

So, in came Cub Scout Pack 737 to the rescue. They built an owl den using wood and 6 feet of flexible hose, buried it 2 feet underground but left the pipe sticking up as the entryway. The “on-spec” development is like low-income housing for these miniature owls, the smallest in North America.

Read more in Steve Scauzillo’s story OWLS.