Boulder delayed grand opening of new trail after adorable baby burrowing owls moved in

If you’re going to be an urban baby owl hatched onto this Earth to help bring back your threatened species, the city of Boulder’s Open Space is a good place to be. 

Boulder County’s Parks and Open Space system, with its 100,000-plus acres, canyon trails and broad foothills vistas, may get more attention.

But the city of Boulder has also spent years helping to bring back native grasslands around the edges of the city, while supporting breeding bird populations at places like Gunbarrel Hill. And when baby burrowing owls poke their adorable heads out of the prairie dog holes their parents took over for housing, Boulder wildlife officials scramble to protect them. 

Burrowing owls are on Colorado’s state threatened species list, so city wildlife specialists keep a lookout on prairie dog holes each spring for telltale signs of owlets — with their trademark yellow eyes and unusual-for-owls daytime feeding habits. 

After consistent years of successful burrowing owl launches, Boulder wildlife experts hadn’t seen any this year. Then they turned up in an awkward spot: Workers putting the final vegetation touches on a new stretch of the Vesper Trail at Gunbarrel Hill south of Lookout Road saw owlets just off the unopened trail. Biologists went to scope out the owlets, and found another burrowing pair with more owlets a little farther off the trail. Two pairs along the trail were great news.

Plans for a summer grand opening for Vesper Trail screech-owled to a halt. Boulder is a good place to ask for wildlife-friendly patience from eager hikers, city ecologist Victoria “Tory” Poulton said. 

Hold those dogs, too, Boulder said. 

“Dogs even on a leash can be a real hazard to owls and especially the young, when they’re still learning to fly, and detect and get away from threats,” Poulton said. 

Open space officials put off the trail opening from early June to just now, and the delay helped the owl parents successfully fledge eight young from their underground abodes. Boulder has a master plan in place to deemphasize the informal trails that have cropped up among frequent park users, steering people toward wildlife-respecting trails like the new Vespers section. Providing bigger blocks of undisturbed land, even inside an already-protected park boundary, is one key to promoting wildlife conservation. 

The day-hunting burrowers are migratory, so this is the time of year the young ones join their parents on flights to Texas or Mexico, Poulton said. In spring, they tend to look for new space close to where they were hatched. 

“So if we’re lucky, we’ll have some of those come back,” she said. “And then our expectation for next year, with the trail open, is that they will decide to not nest right there but move to other parts of the property, where there’s a bigger block of habitat away from disturbance.”