The Arizona Game and Fish Department has issued its annual reminder to leave baby wild animals alone.
But what are you supposed to do when the babies show up for happy hour?
A restaurant and bar in Oro Valley is doubling as a nursery at the moment, courtesy of some great horned owls that chose to nest and raise their chicks above a busy outdoor seating area.
just east of La Ca簽ada Drive, advertises itself as a gastropub with an open-air bar looking out at the Catalina Mountains.For the past few weeks, though, one of the main attractions has been its unflappable family of patio owls.
We have the view, and now we have the owls, said general manager Daniel Goodman. Weve got all the bases covered.
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Staff members first began noticing a pair of adult owls hanging out in a tree on the patio about four months ago, Goodman said.
Eventually, one of the roughly two-foot-tall birds started roosting during the day in an empty plastic flower box on top of one of the patios stone-clad pillars. And soon it became clear that the owl wasnt alone up there.
There are now three gangly chicks who occasionally poke their downy white heads up to stare out at the world with eyes wide and beaks open. Most of the time, theres an adult bird up there with them, while the other parent swoops in sporadically with food deliveries for the family.
Three great horned owl chicks in their nest above the patio of Noble Hops gastropub in Oro Valley on Sunday.
Goodman said the owls have been good for business so far.
People love seeing them up there, he said. The kids really love it.
Goodman has even noticed people coming by to check on the owls during off hours, before the business opens for the day.
On Friday morning, a full hour before opening, a mother and her young daughter stood on the patio watching the nest. The little girl wanted to know the name of the baby owl she could see stretching and moving around next to its drowsy-looking parent.
If the birds are bothered by all the attention, they dont seem to show it. Goodman said Noble Hops hosts live music on the patio four nights a week, and on a busy Saturday night, the outdoor side of the operation might see as many as 200 customers come and go. The owls are up there through all of it.
Someone on the waitstaff has taken to calling the stay-at-home parent Stella, but not, apparently, because of the nests proximity to the beer taps. No one has named the nestlings just yet, Goodman said.
Everyone assumes Stella is the mother of the brood, though the sex of the owl is not definitively known.
The birds could become less of an attraction and more a liability if the baby owls do what a lot of baby owls do: leave the nest before they are fully fledged and end up on the ground or in a nearby tree, where their parents will continue to feed and watch over them, sometimes for weeks on end.
If that happens on the patio, Goodman said, then we cordon that area off, even if it means temporarily giving up a valuable piece of the restaurants real estate.
Of course, these things dont always work out the way people want them to. Just ask anyone who regularly watches those live nest webcams that have become popular online in recent years. or fall ill and die. Adult birds fly off into the night to hunt and never make it back. Nature can be cruel.
Were trying to keep our hopes up high, Goodman said, but hes ready to call a local animal rescue group for help, should the need arise.
According to , great horned owls are found year-round across nearly all of North America, including Southern Arizona.
They tend to hunt at night or sometimes at dusk, using their keen hearing and night vision to spot their prey mostly small mammals, reptiles or the occasional bird and swoop down on it from a high perch.
Both parents take part in providing food to the young, a near-constant chore that can drag on for months, even after the chicks develop the ability to fly at about 10 weeks.
A great horned owl keeps a close eye on a person with a camera as it nests with one of its chicks above the patio of Noble Hops restaurant and bar in Oro Valley on April 14.
Goodman has already contacted Game and Fish to see what, if anything, he should do about the patio owls. He said he was told that, even if he wanted to, it was probably too late to try to relocate the nest at this point.
Wildlife officials didnt show much interest in helping to move the birds in any case, Goodman added, which seems consistent with the agencys aforementioned hands-off approach.
A great horned owl and one of its chicks peers out from their nest above the patio of Noble Hops gastropub in Oro Valley on April 14.
Every year at around this time, Game and Fish issues a press release urging the public not to interfere with baby animals.
Young wildlife found in a yard or in the field is rarely abandoned, this years reminder from the agency stated. While it might be difficult to resist the urge to help seemingly abandoned animals, including newly hatched birds and baby rabbits, a parent is likely nearby and will return once humans have left the area.
A family of horned owls living on the Noble Hops gastropubpatio, 1335 W. Lambert Lane in Oro Valley, as seen on Tuesday.
A licensed wildlife rehabilitator should be contacted in the case of an obviously sick, injured or unresponsive animal, state wildlife officials said. Otherwise, the best thing to do for baby birds or other wild animals is to leave them alone.
Goodman said he read somewhere that owls will reuse their nest sites and that fledglings sometimes return as adults to the places where they hatched to raise their own young. Already, hes looking forward to Noble Hops having an unusual springtime tradition on its hands a live nest cam, only in person, with appetizers and cold beer available.
The Noble Hops gastropub patio where the family of great horned owls is nesting.
Itd be kind of cool if the owls came back next year, he said.
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