Future young animals will be given to Austria, where the birds were at home until the middle of the last century. Since then, they have been considered extinct there – just like in Germany, as the curator of Zurich Zoo, Pascal Marty, told the media on Wednesday. Man saw him as a food competitor and hunted him down to the last animal in these countries.
The habitat of the Ural Owl extends from Northern Europe via Russia to Japan. In this country, however, he was never at home.
One of the new owls at Zurich Zoo comes from the Goldau zoo, two others – a couple – from Austria. Marty hopes that the five-month-old Goldau bird will team up with Ural Owl Lady Rosalie, who has been at Zurich Zoo since 2014 – but so far without a partner. “The male got pretty excited yesterday when the two of them were brought together,” Marty said. If everything goes according to plan, there could be offspring as early as next year.
The monogamous and territorial owls hatch two to four eggs for 28 to 35 days. During this time, the female is responsible for the brood, while the male takes care of the food. The young leave the nest a little over a month after hatching.
The bird, which is one of the owls and lives in the forest, has excellent eyes and ears and, thanks to 14 cervical vertebrae, twice as many as humans, can turn its head up to 270 degrees. This is necessary because his eyes are forward and immobile. Coupled with the ability to fly slowly, this makes the bird, which weighs up to 1.2 kilograms, a great hunter. The crepuscular bird prefers small rodents as food.
Zurich Zoo is now one of 33 zoos and breeding stations that have been participating in the reintroduction project, which has been running since 2009. By September 2019, 428 birds had been released into the wild in Austria. This has already led to success: since 2011 there have been natural breeds of the birds that were once extinct there.