Who's Hoo at St. Procopius

“There are no birds!” was the constant mantra of Fr. Victor Lakatek to students in his ornithology classes and to his confreres. He was well aware that the Lisle countryside was giving way to suburban sprawl and habitat loss. Global change was also on his mind as well as the bird populations that were being altered. Fr. Victor was an expert on birds, especially in the field, knowing volumes on bird habitat, migration, behavior, and had been involved for decades with the Lisle bird-banding operation for which St. Procopius College was well known.

After the monks finished Lauds (morning prayer), it was not uncommon for several students to join the wiry, gray-headed, binoculared monk for morning jaunts on campus, around the slough, through the woods where the new abbey was being built, and out to the abbey farm to glimpse a bit of our local feathered neighbors’ lives. Migration was a particular interest. Many times, those students would forego their regularly scheduled morning classes. Yeah, we cut class, to be with Fr. Victor!

Owls are majestic nocturnal raptors not often seen, except to view their ugly unkempt nests with a lot of help from our pro guide who knew where to find species common to Lisle (including screech, barred, and great horned owls).

Owls, such as the great horned, never read the manual on how to build a nest, or in fact, to maintain them once in use with ravenously hungry and rapidly growing hatchlings consuming whatever they were fed. Haphazardly arranged sticks and dried weeds, abandoned squirrel and bird nests, holes in tree trunks are all possible sites to raise a family.

One to four great horned owl eggs are laid in February when days begin to lengthen but are still cold and capable of producing a Lisle blizzard and sub-zero temperatures should they hatch. Eggs are vacated following a month’s incubation. A number of the owlets might succumb to bacterial infections due to accumulated rodent remains. Nest filth, you know… The rest of the young’s first year also presents other perils such as storms. Having no other predators, once through that first year, they’re clear for a life of predation for an average seventeen years or so in the wild.

Early this spring (or late this winter), a monk in his room took a break from his study and gazed (day-dreamed) out his window. The windows in our cloister rooms are large and look out onto the oak-hickory woodland that surrounds the Abbey. Rubble was spotted on an oak branch within a couple hundred yards of the window. Watching it for a while, he saw movement. Two heads—two young great horned owls in the nest.

The little guys were watched and photographed as they grew, moved cautiously around and out of the nest, molted down feathers, and took on the appearance of an adult (two feet tall and with a four to five foot wing span). The young fledge in about eight weeks and are looked after for another three months.

Evidence of owls can be found in their regurgitated pellets at the base of trees. Owl pellets, containing indigestibles (fur, feathers, and bones of small prey items) have been studied by many a biology student. Pellet contents reveal not only animals consumed per day, but also the diverse mammal populations in the owl’s hunting range and the size of these populations.

If you’re looking to attract or already have these wonderfully efficient toothless predators to your bird feeder, they’re not looking for seed! They’d much rather have the mice, shrews, or voles who steal your seed!

Any banded birds you might find will help ornithologists like Fr. Victor to track the range, migration, and age of birds, owls included. Sending information of the find and data on the band to the address on the band or an email to bandreports@usgs.gov will get you a response of some data as to where and when the bird was banded and by whom. The bander will also get your data.

And know, as you do so, that you continue a century-long tradition begun by Fathers Edmund and Victor when DuPage County was still 95 percent farmland!