Owl-fred Returns

Last winter Casey and I discovered we had a lot of boreal owl activity in the woods around our house, prompting me to secure a taylor made nest box halfway up a spruce tree within viewing distance of our living room window. Several days after installment I climbed up the tree to have a peak inside and found evidence of use, and by March we had confirmed sightings of a boreal owl pair nesting in the box. The pair became known as Owlfred and Owlberta. While Owlberta was often seen poking her head out the entrance hole, and Owlfred was spotted on a few occasions making food deliveries at dusk, we had no idea what was actually going on inside the box. We never confirmed whether the pair managed to fledge any chicks last season, or if they even had any eggs in the first place.

To address this issue, we decided to give the nest box an upgrade this season, and fixed an infrared spy-cam to the ceiling of the box. I routed the 100 feet of audio and video cable through a window in our living room up to the television, and made a custom "Owl Switch" with a red light to indicate when the cam is on or off. This gives us 24 hour access to what's happening inside the box, and for the past month it's been a whole lot of nothing. We've watched the configuration of leaves and sticks in the box shuffle around, adding to the assumption that something had been rustling around in there, but for what has felt like a very long time we've seen nothing. That all changed last night.

Casey flipped on the Owl Switch during a midnight pee run and sure enough, Owlfred had returned. The tips of his primaries and tail obscured half of the box, and he was calling. This meant that Owlfred was perched at the entrance facing out, broadcasting to potential mates that he had found a nice place to raise some chicks. To hear his calls, check out the brief video below.