CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Nesting in burrows is uncommon among birds, a classical example being the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia). In North America, where this raptor has been extensively studied, it often uses burrows of fossorial mammals, but in southern South America this owl digs its own burrows. We studied characteristics of size, lining, and decoration of Burrowing Owl nests located in dunes, rural and urban areas of the Pampas of Argentina, and explored whether such characteristics vary according to land cover. Our results show that Burrowing Owls construct burrows of similar characteristics in the three land covers sampled, although nests in dunes showed wider entrances and longer tunnels. Such variation might relate to soil, which is more compact at dunes than at rural and urban areas. In both rural and urban areas owls used manure to line the burrow and decorated the nest entrance with visible objects, but the diversity and amount of materials used for decoration was much higher in urban nests. Our results on burrow measurements, burrow-lining, and decoration behavior of Burrowing Owls in the Pampas are consistent with those reported for North American populations, even when burrow construction processes differ at both ranges of the species? distribution.

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