Having made bird feeding and watching a hobby, a suggestion to check out other bird houses while shopping online lead to the purchase of a Stovall Screech Owl nest box. We'd occasionally seen larger owls around the neighborhood at night and gave this a try. The nest box was filled with wood chips included in the package and put up on a 12 foot long 2x4 attached to a post on our backyard fence in early December 2010. As near as I could tell this was less than ideal, but as good as it was going to get. On February 27th, 2011 we noticed something looking out of the nest box and in fact, a Screech Owl had taken up residence.
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| Stovall Screech Owl Nest Box |
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| Occupied Stovall Screech Owl Nest Box |
Apparently we were lucky to have owls so soon. We did not have a camera in the nest box so our involvement consisted of watching the owl off and on during the days. We were not really that tuned in to the owls lives, nor aware of their progress in the reproductive cycle. I ordered a nest camera in April, by then we could see feeding activity around dusk. I realizing there was no way to put it inside at this late stage, so I set it up outside very close to the box. These videos were collected on that first night:
Nightime Feeding Videos from 2011 Season
We were lucky -the next day they were gone! I now know that this night of April 24th, 2011 was the final feeding frenzy at fledging just as we saw this year on May 10th. We were hooked - things were not so easy for 2012, there were a lot of trials and tribulations that I will share in the coming weeks.
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