Home»Burrowing Owls etc., Denver, Colorado

In the high plains/prairie (5000+ ft) around Denver International Airport, east of Denver city in Colorado, there are innumerable prairie-dog towns. Prairie-dogs are a species of ground squirrel, and are quite photogenic in their own right, but this story is not about them. It is about another resident of these towns, the Burrowing Owl. This long-legged diurnal owl lives in burrows borrowed from the prairie-dogs. They prey on large insects, lizards, and small mammals (a prairie-dog might be a little too big for these owls to handle!). On a recent trip to Denver, I rented a car for half a day and drove around the outskirts of the airport to see some of these owls.