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 us control this problem. Upon walking the area, we found owl pellets, indicating the owl has been successful at hunting in the area near the garden. Our next step is to adjust the camera settings to capture more activity....stay tuned!
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 money from Northwestern Mutual insurance co. made buying the cameras possible so give a big hoot for em! Further bulletins as warranted.