RURAL ADA COUNTY - Bill Mattox and James McKinley step from their trucks into a raw April wind, leaving their doors ajar and stepping gingerly onto a stubbled field.
"If we make too much noise, we'll flush them," Mattox says. "Uh-oh, there one goes now."
A flash of beige erupts from a nesting box high in a hay loft. Abandoning any pretext of stealth, McKinley runs to a point beneath the box and slaps a net on a long pole over its entrance. Mattox lifts an extension ladder into position beside him.
"I think she's still in there," McKinley says.
Still holding the pole, he deftly climbs the ladder, reaches inside the box and, surprising everyone but himself, lifts out a mother barn owl. The bird could almost be sleeping; she doesn't struggle in the least.
"It's M2," McKinley says. "She's pretty laid-back. I took a blood sample from her once."
The men put a cover called an aba over M2 (the designation on her leg band) to keep her calm. They weigh and measure her. Mattox records numbers in a log.
"This is a very cooperative bird," McKinley says.
M2 still hasn't moved. Failing to find a vein suitable for drawing blood to test for West Nile, McKinley scales the tall ladder to the nesting box again and bands her five owlets. An estimated 20 days old, they hiss at him like snakes. Finally M2 is returned to her brood, and it's off to the next nesting box.
It's a familiar pattern for Mattox, president of the Conservation Research Foundation - and bird man extraordinaire.
Mattox and his wife, Joan, began the foundation in 1994 while studying the effects on raptors of Mountain Home Air Force Base's training range. When that study ended in the mid 1990s, the former Ohioans decided to stay in Idaho and use the foundation to conduct more raptor research here.
"Joan's originally from Seattle and we'd been aiming for the Northwest ever since we got married," he said.
Though the foundation's work has wound down, as he puts it, Mattox has lost none of his zeal for studying birds. He and McKinley, a wildlife researcher, are studying the incidence of West Nile disease in Swainson's hawks and other birds. They began studying barn owls in 2000, providing them with new places to nest as development threatened their habitat.
Barn owls traditionally nest in hollow trees or dark places in barns and other little-used buildings. As these have fallen to development, the birds have chosen other nesting sites, such as cavities in hay stacks. When the stacks are moved, however, the eggs or young are likely to fall from the nest.
That's where Mattox and McKinley come to the rescue. Barn owls are one of the few raptors that will nest in man-made structures. The men have built and placed more than 60 plywood nesting boxes in rural Ada and Canyon counties.
Once the boxes are in place, they observe and record the prey that barn owls bring to them. They study the birds' movements and breeding chronology, how the placement of nesting boxes affects numbers of breeding pairs and how effectively barn owls are able to control rodent populations.
That's of more than passing interest to farmers, whose crops rodents can decimate.
"We're pushing owls as natural predators," Mattox said. "We know farmers in the Marsing area who got together and built nesting boxes themselves. They know that owls can at least partially replace more expensive control agents."
"It lessens the reliance on pesticides and helps keep the Earth a little greener," Joan Mattox said. "It's a win-win."
Some barn owl pairs nest twice a year, her husband said, and have "six to 10 young. That translates to a lot of gophers."
Raptor studies translate to a lot of work. Mattox figures he devotes several days a week to the study of barn owls, Swainson's hawks and other raptors. But for sporadic donations to the foundation, used mainly for gas and other expenses, he receives nothing for his work.
His work with birds of prey is all the more surprising because it has nothing to do with his profession. He retired 15 years ago as an economic geographer with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, where he did groundwater mapping and flood-plain management.
"Now I'm back to doing what I want," he said.
His interest in raptors predates his state career. It began when he went to Greenland as a college student to study gyrfalcons and peregrine falcons.
"It got me hooked," he said. "I ended up going back and doing 28 years of summer field work."
Now 77, he still spends several days a week working with birds.
"The only way to describe it is that he has a passion for raptors," Joan Mattox said. "That's the underlying reason. He's absolutely devoted to these birds."
"There sure isn't any money in it," McKinley added.
When he isn't working with birds, Mattox stays busy editing a weighty bibliography of falconry for a friend.
"I'm into the W's now," he said. "I should finish it soon if my eyes hold out."
He is a man bewitched by birds.
"I just love birds," he said. "I love birds of prey and the whole falconry thing. I've loved it all my life."
Tim Woodward: 377-6409
