Suffolk Officer, Preserve, Rescue Baby Owl In Huntington Station

HUNTINGTON STATION, NY — A baby great horned owl that fell out of its nest on Monday in Huntington Station was saved thanks to the quick thinking of a Suffolk police officer and volunteers from a nature preservation.

Officer Andrew Hooghuis of the second precinct responded to Nathan Place for a 911 call Monday morning after the owl fell from its nest.

"While the owl’s mother watched from above, the officer took the young owl under his wings," the police department wrote in a Facebook post.

The homeowner called Smithtown's Sweet Briar Nature Center to help the owl.

Janine Bendicksen, the volunteers’ supervisor of wildlife rehabilitation, responded with another Sweet Briar Nature Center team member. Bendicksen rigged a makeshift nest out of a milk crate and attached large branches around the ends for zip ties and placed the nest as high in the tree as possible, she said.

"We put the baby back, and the parents come back, and they're like, 'Oh, great, baby's here,' and they continue their little nesting, which is bringing food to the babies," Bendicksen told Patch. "It gives them a second shot at life."

The baby owl weighed 570 grams and was roughly the size of a guinea pig, according to Bendicksen. The baby's mother oversaw the rescue from above.

Hooghuis and the Sweet Briar volunteers most likely saved the baby owl's life.

"Either a fox, a possum, a raccoon, a cat, a dog, something would have had it for a meal," Bendicksen said.

The Huntington Station rescue marked the third or fourth time a baby owl has been rescued by Sweet Briar volunteers, Bendicksen estimates. Many such rescues were made in 2020. The organization previously crafted wooden nest boxes, but the intensive labor behind it led to a switch to milk crates.

Owls nest in the wintertime, which is different from normal songbirds that nest in the spring, Bendicksen explained. Owls lay their eggs in January and remain with their babies for months after they take over other birds' nests. Those nests often fall apart before the owl is ready to leave, which is what happened in Huntington Station.

"If we were living in a perfect little forest-y world, it wouldn't necessarily be the worst-case scenario, because that baby can walk, so it would probably go up on a dead tree and go up higher and perhaps avoid predators," she said. "Now that they're nesting in our back yards and golf courses and whatnot, they're literally sitting ducks. They fall to the ground, and there is no way of getting them off the ground. Their parents can't lift them up. So when we get a call this time of year, I know what we're going to have to do."