Been a While

Site 1

It has been very quiet at this site, owl wise this season.  The resident screech owls disappeared back in 2015. Unfortunately, it seems, no new screech owls have found this prime real-estate yet. Sometimes Barred or Great Horned owls spend some time in some woodlots near by in the winter. This year nada. Well until just recently, to save being completely owl-skunked a snowy owl showed up…well quite a distance away but no doubt an owl!  This year has been very good for snowy owls, not quite up to the record breaking 2013-2014 snowy year but close.  So just a distant docushot snowy owl pic.

Spreading the Resistance: TX again.

In Texas it seems like screech owls are quite abundant.  Got a nice letter last May, so it took me awhile to give it the attention it deserved. Anyway here is the note plus an awesome photo…(photo courtesy and copyright M. Simon, used with permission)

I purchased one of your owl houses for the 2016 season. We had 2 babies then, this year we had FIVE! The slot wasn’t big enough to show all of them, but another is back there. The babies only show up for a few days and then are gone. We enjoy watching them. And all have survived so far.

Thank you very much for the picture!!!

Spreading the Resistance:the Kestrel Kind

Thrilled to say that an SQR box (circle entrance) has been successfully used and nested in by American Kestrels! They fledged 3 young this year. It all started back in 2013 someone backed out of a box order, I offered up the box to Phil Brown our Essex County Kestrel Trail operator (and of https://nebirdsplus.com ) he happily found a perfect spot for the box to integrate it into his project and 4 years later….A Kestrel nest! Kestrels are meadow/grassland birds, as such they have been declining in Massachusetts (and new england) so this project and its recent successes are very encouraging! Both of photos courtesy of Phil (used with permission) you can see his full documentation (scroll up or down for different years): https://massbird.org/ecoc/kestrel-nest-box-results/

the SQR box in a tree with banding crew