Diurnal Time Budget of Burrowing Owls in a Resident Population During the Non-Breeding Season

We present the first non-breeding-season time budget of adult burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia). We evaluated the hypothesis that during the non-breeding season the gender-specific allocation of time and effort observed diurnally in the breeding season changes, with males and females exhibiting more similar time budgets. Owls spent most of their time alert (58.4 +/- 7.2% and 42.6 +/- 8.3%) and in the burrow (19.3 +/- 5.3% and 46.2 +/- 7.2% for males and females, respectively). Females tended to spend more time in the burrow, and males spent more time alert. Although we found little evidence for temporal variation of these patterns for males, females were found more often in the burrow during early afternoon. Our results support a hypothesis that time-allocation differences between males and females during the breeding season are at least partially retained into the non-breeding season. The major finding of the study was the high percentage of time owls spent within the nest burrow during the non-breeding season, contrary to previous understanding of the ecology of this species from which management guidelines are based. Our findings indicate that considerable care should be taken when modifying areas that contain burrows within areas occupied by burrowing owls during the non-breeding season.