A pair of burrowing owls that hitched a ride on a Miami cruise ship bound for Spain are safely back in the Sunshine State following a complex year-long handoff between wildlife officials.
After a series of quarantines and a mountain of permitting, the owls were released in a field Thursday afternoon at the 21,000-acre Dinner Island Ranch Wildlife Management Area, south of Lake Okeechobee. The ranch, a rambling landscape of pineland, swamp and prairie, draws a menagerie of birds including roseate spoonbills, wild turkey and, yes, burrowing owls.
For Florida wildlife officials, it was a first.
READ MORE: Burrowing owls headed home to Miami after hitching a ride on a cruise ship
"We've had a few instances [where owls] landed on a cruise ship," said Madison Cole, the avian conservation coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "This is the first time they made it all the way to another country."
The release ended a yearlong adventure that took the owls from PortMiami, where they stowed away on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas for a 10-day cruise to the Port of Cartagena, then Murcia, known for its ornate cathedral, and on to the medieval fortress city of Toledo. They feasted on mice at one wildlife center. Quail chicks were added to the menu at another. From there, the pair traveled to Madrid for the international flight back to Miami.
Because burrowing owls are protected in Florida — much of the sandy prairie where they burrow as been paved over — planning that journey took coordinating a dizzying list of international trade authorities, wildlife permitting and quarantine rules.
" We had discussions on the feasibility of bringing them back, but we decided that it was an important effort," Cole said. "It helped that we're able to quarantine them, determine if they had any disease issues, if they were eligible for release, no injuries, things like that."
Had they not come home, Spanish authorities said they would need to be held in captivity because they were not native.
The owls were first spotted on the Allure in late February 2025, where they spent much of the trip in a lush garden on the ship's eighth deck. After the crew netted them, the owls were kept in hutches made out of cardboard boxes. Once in Cartagena, they were taken to a wildlife center in Murcia for a check-up and three-month quarantine. In May, Spanish authorities asked U.S. wildlife about their return.
Once an exchange was worked out, the birds were moved to Toledo, for another quarantine. Between September and December, Florida wildlife officials said, permits were hammered out for the birds' return.
Finally in February the birds boarded a flight from Madrid for Miami International Airport, where they were again quarantined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At the international airport, where the exotic animal trade does a brisk business, oddball animals — from smuggled songbirds to turtles one passenger tucked inside her bra — are not uncommon.
Meanwhile, FWC staff had begun preparing for the owls' homecoming. The pint-sized, yellow-eyed birds spend much of their life on the ground, where they dig burrows in open prairies. While the owls traveled together, Cole said it's not yet clear if they area a mating pair. A check-up involved drawing blood to determine their sex.
After surveying potential sites, biologists settled on the Dinner Island area, a working ranch south of Lake Okeechobee.
"There was available pasture that we knew could support the owls and historically had been favorable conditions," Cole said.
To make their new home more welcoming, biologists spruced up a vacant existing owl burrow and buried an artificial burrow — a PVC pipe leading to a bucket-shaped burrow.
Their homecoming finally arrived on March 12, when USDA officials ended their quarantine and cleared the owls by release. By afternoon, they were on their way to the ranch, where they were banded to identify them and released.
" We put them in the artificial burrow thinking that that would help them realize there's a shelter for them available for them to hide… and then they emerged," Cole said.
After sizing up their new digs, the owls flew into a nearby pasture; an indication, Cole said, that the globetrotting owls were back to doing normal, owly things.
"This is a great example of just a wildlife success story," she said. "You don't hear about it too often, especially at this level of scale, knowing that we had Spanish partners [and] so many different people involved who just genuinely wanted to make sure that the owls returned home."
Copyright 2026 WLRN
