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Concerns over threats facing Owls

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Owls are increasingly under threat and now the Owl Rescue Centre at the Hartbeespoort Dam is making great strides in rehabilitating those that have been injured and poisoned. It also faces the task of eliminating deep-seated superstitions about these raptors.

Thousands of Owls are killed each year by cars and rat poison. The superstition that they signify death also threaten their existence. The centre tackles these myths hands on, by showing the many school groups that visit them each year.

 “You take the little five-year-old kid and he comes and he can touch the bird and the bird doesn’t bite him, and it’s just a bird… then it doesn’t matter what his grandmother tells him, because he’s going to know: ‘gran, it’s just a bird, there’s nothing evil about it’. But it’s going to take a few generations to work its way out, “said Brendan Murray, founder of the centre.

 Being a protected species means that Owls may not be kept as pets but many still end up in the pet trade.

“We get a lot of Owls, especially the white-faced Owls. People keep them as pets, and then they feed them the wrong diet and what’s most often is… they feed them mince and there’s no calcium in mince. These guys need a high calcium diet.”

 The center currently rehabilitates about 60 owls.

During breeding season, they go through up to 10 000 day-old chickens, apart from rats, which they catch throughout Gauteng and North West.

The majority of its funding is generated through owl boxes. Murray and his team, have placed a thousand at homes across the country this past year.

Owls don’t build their own nests. So what they do is, they use man-made structures, or they will use another raptor’s nest, or they will use a palm tree, or they will just nest on the ground. So an Owl box supplies a safe environment for owls to breed.”

What is not to love about owls? Their eyes are so big, that it takes up most of their skulls, and cannot move in the sockets.

They make up for this, by being able to turn their necks a whopping 270 degrees, thanks to 14 vertebrae in their necks.

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