Tune into one of the live feeds from the Port of Stockton and you might catch an ivory, heart-shaped face filling the frame — a curious barn owl settling inside its wooden nest box.
The box is one of twenty stationed high between the port’s industrial warehouses, each perched on a wooden rod; a small refuge where native owls can lay their eggs and raise their young.
And down below, at one of three nest boxes fitted with cameras on a recent Thursday morning, a cluster of the owls’ human caretakers craned to peek at the ghost-like raptors in action.
“He was standing in front,” said one — Jeff Wingfield, deputy director of the port’s environmental programs and public outreach department, as he squinted at the live feed on his phone of a resting male barn owl…