Forty feet above ground, straddling an owl's nest tucked in the crotch of a white oak, Mike Wiseman beamed like a proud father Monday as he cradled a 3 1/2-week-old great horned owl fledgling before gently laying it in the nest with two new siblings.
It had been a long trip for the owl, its two beige tufts of hair sticking up from its head like little horns. Found last week by state nature workers, it had fallen from another nest, most likely while learning to use its underdeveloped wings.
With little room in the home nest, already occupied by two other baby owls, Wiseman and Sandy Heyn, both DuPage County Forest Preserve District workers, had to find another nest for the baby to live.
It is a common predicament this time of year, as baby great horned owls born in December and January, and other young birds of prey, fall to the ground while developing their flying muscles and learning how to hunt and survive.
But on this day, as Wiseman stood in the tree in the front yard of a home near Wheaton, it was a predicament that had been solved. Thanks largely to a call from a family, who notified the district's Willowbrook Wildlife Center of the owl's nest in their tree.
In an attempt to repeat such success stories, the Glen Ellyn-based wildlife center for the first time is making a public plea, asking DuPage County residents to call the center if they think they have seen the nest of any birds of prey--or raptors--such as owls, hawks and falcons.
"What we want to do is return these babies back to safe nests in the wild," said Heyn, Willowbrook's wildlife specialist. "That's what our whole purpose is. We don't want to take care of these animals; we want to get them back to the wild where they belong."
If enough people call, Heyn said, the wildlife center will draw a map of raptor nests, which workers can use to place orphaned birds all over DuPage County.
Other raptors common to the area are screech owls, which are smaller, and barred owls, which more often live in the deeper woods. Red-tail hawks, Cooper's hawks and American kestrels, which are a type of falcon, also frequent the area.
Heyn said "foster" nests are needed about a dozen times a year.
Though Heyn and Wiseman, a forest worker and expert tree-climber, usually try to place baby owls back in their home nests, sometimes those nests cannot be found or are too crowded with other babies.
So-called fostering is almost always successful, Heyn said. Despite the myth that humans should not handle birds because a human's scent could cause a mother bird to reject a baby, Heyn said, birds have a poor sense of smell. Also, she said, mother birds cannot count and do not reject newcomers.
"For them, it is just another mouth to feed," she said.
On Monday, that was the case when Wiseman and Heyn decided to place their recently found baby owl in just such a foster nest. The nest, which has been there at least two years, already had two other baby owls but was big enough for a third.
Still, Wiseman and Heyn built a bigger plywood nest to ensure the newcomer would fit safely inside. Such artificial nests, also called owl platforms, are filled with branches and leaves and have never been rejected by mother birds in several instances, Heyn said.
As the sun tried to crack through the clouds about 8 a.m., Wiseman began the process by scaling the white oak with a series of ropes, using the knobs on the tree for footing. As Wiseman made his way up the tree, Heyn kept a lookout from the ground for the mother owl, which was nowhere to be seen.
"No sign of mommy, that's good," she said. "Otherwise, she could attack Mike."
As Wiseman made it 40 feet up the tree and stood over the nest, he removed the two baby birds, placed them in a white bucket and lowered the bucket to Heyn, who took the orphaned bird and placed it inside the bucket with the other two.
Wiseman then hammered the 4-inch-deep plywood nest in the same spot where the natural nest was located in the tree and spread the natural nest around with other branches. In minutes, the bucket with the three baby owls was raised to Wiseman, who placed them in their new home.
"I love this part of the job," he said. "To see those guys back in their nests, it's just great."
None of this would have been possible without the help of the family who called the wildlife center, Heyn said.
The family, who asked not to be named, said they have watched the nest and the owls since moving into the home in May.
Though the family had the nest pointed to them by their real estate agent, Heyn said if others want to spot raptor nests they should look for telltale signs around trees, such as a number of bird droppings and owl "pellets," which are like fur balls but made up of the remains of partially digested animals such as rodents and rabbits.
But residents might want to peer out their windows soon. In three weeks, the same baby placed in the foster nest Monday will be testing its wings again--and being more successful.
"In six weeks, that little guy will be gone," Heyn said.