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Spring 2024 Clean Out and Update

It has been a bit of a hiatus, but  we have installed new batteries and are back to monitoring  the boxes.    This Spring, we got help from the Village of Glencoe.  A big THANK YOU to the Village for helping us maintain the houses!  We completed our Spring "check in" for owls.  Nothing right now.  Our owl resident from last year has moved on.  Houses were filled with lots of sticks and leaves, most likely done by squirrels.      We were hoping a new owl would take up residency for mating purposes, which begins in February.   Some Owl mating facts:   Mating occurs February through March. Eggs are laid in April.   The female will lay eggs at two-day intervals.   Average clutch size is four.   26 days to incubate. 31 days for babies to fledge.   Have a single brood but will renest if clutch doesn't take.   I have read some great owl books over the past year and wanted to share:   Wesley the Owl  by Stacey O'Brien 
Recent posts

Exciting News for the Garden's Owl Project!!!

While doing spring maintenance on the three owl houses, we found a screech owl nesting in the northern most house!  It took some time, but we FINALLY had success.  The purpose of putting up the owl houses was to introduce a natural based solution to the garden's vole problem.  As screech owls are predators of voles, our newest resident will help control this problem.     Our next step is to adjust the camera settings to capture more activity....stay tuned! .   The above pictures are from the trail camera.  You can see the owl peeking out from the hole of the house.  Based on the time date on the pictures, it appears the owl begins peeking out around dusk, before starting to hunt. Below are some pictures caught with a phone camera, just great!  And a much better close up of our feathered friend.  Based on the feather coloring, it appears to be a "gray morph".  Below are some Screech Owl facts from the Cornell Lab - All About Birds website:   Eastern Screech-Owl Identificat

Trail Camera Installed!

  2/20/22 - Today I'm updating the post to say that we have now found and installed trail cameras next to each house. We decided not to put the cameras inside the houses because they were large and might intrude the nest, and they also needed sunlight because they were solar powered, so we placed each camera about ten feet from the nest with a good view of the entrance hole. A very generous donation from Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company. made buying the cameras possible so give a big "hoot" for them!

4-29-21 GCG Owl Houses Update.

 Last Friday we checked on the houses, and in one of the owl ones there is a nest of European starlings. This is along with a nest in the American Kestrel house.  Although the birds aren't what we were hoping for, we will let them stay for now because we aren't sure if they have laid eggs yet and just out of respect for the birds.   After walking the park several times, we did find an owl pellet.  Not sure what species produced this but evidence that owls are in the area!  I pulled it apart using two sticks.  I have circled in blue the undigested bone fragments from this meal! We also gave the houses an upgrade.  We added branches to the exterior of the houses to give our potential residents a place to roost.     BEFORE: AFTER UPGRADE:

It all started with a vole, some disappearing carrots and a movie....The GCG Owl Houses

Helping humanity in a natural way What: The Problem