Laguna Hills : Family of Owls at Home on Lawyer’s Window Sill

A couple of great horned owls have become city dwellers, leaving behind their farm ways to start a family in Laguna Hills.

The pair is at home in a planter on a fourth-floor window ledge of the Great American Bank Building, just outside the office of Kit Stetina, a patent attorney.

Last Tuesday, the last of three clumsy owlets hatched. Like his siblings, he emerged looking more like a wet chick rolled in milkweed plumes than his ferocious father. His majesty hovered on a nearby lamppost, ruffling his feathers and cackling his discontent.

He and his mate first staked out the ledge in February, 1984, when they burrowed into the window box soil and plucked out plants to make room for a nest. Mother and father took turns, hatching the eggs, then guarding the young for two months before leaving the site. Three of the four owlets they raised last spring went to live at Lion Country Safari, in Irvine. The fourth just flew away, Stetina said.

This year, Stetina and his seasonal visitors are better acquainted. Stetina said he still finds himself gazing out the window at the new family “far too much, unfortunately,” but his interest is more than returned. Stetina’s every move is watched by the saucer-eyed creatures, and they seem to have learned to trust him. Only he is allowed to come within a foot or two of the tinted glass pane that separates them. “They get accustomed to a certain person. I’m lucky it’s me, that they chose my office,” Stetina said.

Stetina isn’t the only one captivated by the feathered predators. He said that about 75 of his clients came in to peek at them last season, and the enthusiasm is once again evident throughout the office.

While the owls are rather conspicuous now, perched on the ledge or atop a nearby parking garage, all that will remain when they leave, in about five weeks, will be the hollowed-out planter, torn foliage and remnants of the rabbits they hunted for dinner. But Stetina said the chance to watch the owlets hatch and grow up is well worth the gardening inconvenience.

“You become very accustomed to seeing them here and watching them develop, day by day. You know they are going to leave--that’s the whole point--but I’ll miss them then.”