To make it easier to picture the burrowing owl in the wild, browse the images below.

 

Burrowing owls (athene cunicularia) can be found in the open landscapes of prairies, desert, grassland, pastures, airports, public parks, and playgrounds of the Americas from western Canada, the United States, including Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America down to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. They live in underground burrows that they've dug or taken over from a prairie dog, ground squirrel, tortoise, gopher, or gopher turtle.

Burrowing owls feed mainly on insects and rodents but eat almost anything small that they can catch. They hunt close to the ground from dusk til dawn, during the day. They are most active at dusk and dawn and tend to rest during the middle of the day. They can usually be seen on fence posts, or other vantage points near their burrows. They can often be seen on the ground.

They often carpet the entrance to their burrows with animal dung to attract dung beetles and other insects to eat. To make sure that their nestlings have enough to eat, they often cache extra food in times of plenty. One cache in Saskatchewan in 1997 was filled with more than 200 rodents. When they bob up and down its an indication that they are nervous.