Burrowing owl Cape Coral
— a sentry the size of a coffee cup.
Not only on a wall.
Burrowing owl Cape Coral, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The Florida burrowing owl stands nine inches tall and lives underground. Cape Coral has the largest urban population in the state, more than a thousand pairs, on vacant lots between the canals. Each burrow gets a wooden cross and a perch from a volunteer. The owls work daylight. At noon a male stands on his stake watching the heat off the road.
The place, in three passes.
Cape Coral sits on the Caloosahatchee River in Lee County, southwest Florida, across from Fort Myers. It was platted in the late 1950s as one of the largest pre-platted communities in the country, with more than 400 miles of canals and tens of thousands of empty lots reserved for future homes. Those open, mowed sand lots turned out to be near-perfect habitat for the Florida burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia floridana), and the city now hosts the largest urban population in the state. Cape Coral named it the official city bird in 2005.
The Florida burrowing owl stands about nine inches tall and weighs around six ounces. Unlike most owls, it hunts by day, feeding on insects, anoles, and small frogs, and it nests in burrows it digs in dry sand soil. The Cape Coral population is estimated at more than 1,000 nesting pairs across the city's empty lots and median strips. Florida Fish and Wildlife reclassified the subspecies as state-threatened in 2017, and Cape Coral runs a permitting program for any lot work near an active burrow.
Nesting runs from February through July. Volunteers from Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife stake every known burrow with a wooden cross and a low perch, and they install a starter hole on lots where new pairs are scouting. The Burrowing Owl Festival each February, held on the last Saturday of the month, draws several thousand visitors and funds the next year of habitat work. Outside nesting season the owls remain visible on their burrow mounds through the cooler months, posting up at dawn and dusk.
