Locals welcome two bundles of joy
JUKSKEI PARK – Deon Botes and Lerinda Müller returned from the hospital with their newborn son Jaxon three weeks ago to find that some owlets had hatched on their property too!
A new family in Jukskei Park got more little ones than they expected recently when some young wildlife decided to move into their property too.
When Deon Botes and Lerinda Müller returned home from the hospital with their newborn son Jaxon earlier this month, they discovered that he was not the only baby on the property – a pair of spotted owls had had chicks at the same time too. The couple discovered that the owl box they had installed on the property about a year ago was not only occupied by a breeding pair of adult spotted eagle owls, but that pair had successfully laid eggs in the box that subsequently hatched. On 16 October the EcoSolutions team visited the site to ring the owlets for research purposes.
“It’s absolutely awesome to have owls on the property,” said Botes.
“The adult owls moved in on about 6 August, and then three weeks ago we went to the hospital to have the baby,” explained Müller. “When we returned home with Jaxon about three weeks ago, we realised that the owls had had their babies too! Jaxon and the owlets must be almost the exact same age.”
The owl box was installed and maintained by EcoSolutions, which runs the Owl Box Project to provide safe living spaces for owls in the urban environment of Johannesburg. A few weeks after the owlets hatched, the EcoSolutions team came to the Jukskei Park home to place rings on the owlets’ legs, which will help researchers studying the animals understand movement patterns in the species if the owls are ever picked up.
Three EcoSolutions staff members – Edias Dube, Hussein Moyo and Msizi Gumede – very bravely climbed a ladder to retrieve the owlets from the box before bringing them to the ground and allowing Botes, Müller, Jaxon and others from the neighbourhood to watch as the rings were placed on their legs by Moyo. Sara Orchardson, a zoologist with EcoSolutions, used the opportunity to educate the observers about owls in general and the work that her company does.
“This area – Douglasdale, Fourways, Sandton and surrounds – is a really good area for owls to live in. It is not too developed and there are a lot of spaces such as schools with fields where owls can live and hunt,” she explained.
“More often than not, breeding pairs will return to the same place to have their next clutch of eggs, so there’s a chance this pair will have more owlets here next year.”
After the owlets were ringed and admired by those present, the EcoSolution team carefully returned them to the box, where the mother and father owls returned later that evening.
Details: EcoSolutions 072 365 9777
www.ecosolutions.co.za;
infor@ecosolutions.co.za
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