Flutterby™! : Hungry Owl project fundraiser

Last night we went to a fundraiser at the Marin Art and Garden Center for The Hungry Owl Project, an organization that, among other things, builds and distributes boxes for barn owl nesting, with the hope that if agricultural lands in our area can manage rodents and other pests by encouraging predators, they can use less rodenticides and pesticides.

Enjoyed the entire evening, the owls and other birds, rescued by WildCare, were fun and cute, and Joe Mueller did a good job with quips, but I want to see Jack Barclay talk on his topics of expertise more. He's all about burrowing owls, apparently spends much of his time in the areas around San Jose airport watching them, but on a bunch of potentially incendiary topics he had well reasoned informed responses and an ability to mix his obvious love of the creatures with with a broader view that makes me want to hear him talk again.

I was thumbing through the proceedings of the barn owl symposium book that he'd brought with him, and asked "why does it seem like there's an inverse correlation between reported aircraft bird strikes and bird population", and his answers about data quality looked to some of the larger human sociological issues.

He's doing a talk next Tuesday at the Golden Gate Audubon Society in which he's looking at owls and the impact of the windmills at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, and I don't think we're going to be able to make it, but I'd love to hear his perspective on that issue.

As for the fundraiser, It probably cost us about the same as or less than (if it's a big name show near Union Square) a play in the city, was at least as fun, and did better things for our area.