Nic Korte gives a hoot about owls.

Korte, a retired geochemist, is the conservation chair for the Grand Valley Audubon Society and leads the Audubon’s Western Screech Owl project. The decades-long initiative aims to monitor and provide habitats for the valley’s population of Western Screech Owls, a petite native owl that thrives in Western Colorado’s climate. For 10 of the past 11 years, Mesa County has counted the highest population of Western Screech Owls in the world, thanks to Korte’s efforts.

The project involves conserving and creating habitats for the owls by placing nesting boxes in areas where new habitat is needed. The ideal home to a Western Screech Owl is a cavity in a tree, particularly in old cottonwoods.

“We wouldn’t have as many owls without the boxes,” Korte says. “We’ve created a lot of habitat. If there’s a dead tree with a hole in it that owls need, people will cut it down, so we put a box on a live tree and create a habitat.”

Western Colorado is an ideal area for the owls due to its temperature and elevation. The Western Screech Owl doesn’t migrate, so it relies on food being available year-round in the valley.

“We just seem to be a sweet spot. If you get up a little higher in elevation, the vegetation changes and the owls that are present will change,” Korte explains. “This time of year, the screech owls eat insects and will catch an occasional bird. They eat a lot of rodents. Some of the old alleys in Grand Junction are good for that or places where there are fields.”

The project began in the 1980s when a birder named Rich Levad took an interest in the owls, and Korte got involved in 1991. When Levad passed away in 2004, Korte took over the project.

“I just started finding out where the owls were. I’d knock on doors and see if people wanted an owl box, and a lot of them did. People started hearing about the project, and the box program just kept growing,” Korte shares.

The populations are recorded during the Audubon Society’s yearly Christmas Bird Count, a nationwide annual bird census where volunteers record the species and number of as many birds as they can find. While the Western Slope’s screech owl numbers are record-setting, they are declining due to human activity.

“When Rich did the initial surveys without boxes, he estimated about 500 Western Screech Owls in the valley. Now we’re estimating about half that, just because of the loss of habitat,” Korte says. “The biggest thing the community can do is consider that we need to keep as much natural area as we can. A lot of the old cottonwoods are not just for owls, but they are also a tremendous resource for other birds. Do the best you can to protect these places with the resources you have.”

Read more about Korte and his adventures as a birder in his book Ten Jungle Days, available on Amazon.

Originally published in the Fall 2021 issue of Spoke+Blossom.

Who We Are: Nic Korte, Author + Geochemist