Last week's missive about burrowing owls at Journal Center triggered an email from the folks at Los Alamos National Laboratory about the Mexican spotted owls living in the lab's protected backcountry.

Having covered New Mexico's military-industrial complex for many years, I've often had the chance to visit the areas at Kirtland Air Force Base, White Sands Missile Range and Los Alamos that are tucked away "behind the fence". If you're not in an area where they're actually blowing things up, or bulldozing roads and erecting buildings, there's actually some lovely defacto wilderness.

That cordon of security has created some nice Mexican spotted owl habitat in the canyons at Los Alamos, as you can see from the picture.

Lab biologists firsts spotted a pair of owls in 1994, and there are now two nesting pairs. David Keller, the biologist who does the lab's bird monitoring, sends along this insanely cute picture of the chick: