If You Build It ...

... Will they come?

You are looking at a hand made stick nest inside a chicken wire 'bucket' lined with landscaping fabric. I found the plans on the inter webs.

Great Horned Owls do not make their own nests, instead using those made by raptors, once the raptors are done with them of course. And as we've been hearing these owls calling in our woods we thought it would be nice to have a pair nest in the yard. And as this is the time they are looking for a place to settle down it made sense to install a nest for them now.

🦉  🦉  🦉  🦉  🦉

My luck with these projects has not been great ...

... the Pileated Woodpecker feeder attracts Eastern Grey Squirrels ... the flying squirrel box that housed a bee hive ... Prothonotary Warbler boxen which house mud pipe wasps ... Eastern Bluebird boxen used by Carolina Chickadees ... and of course our bat house which has never housed a bat ...

But as they say, the sixth time's the charm!

🦉  🦉  🦉  🦉  🦉

Here it is installed up in a tree, just waiting for the owls to come.

More of an 'owl's eye view'. I don't know what they are waiting for.

🦉  🦉  🦉  🦉  🦉

It wasn't easy getting it up in the tree.

This is me with the first version of the nest, ready for installation. But it was not to be.

Our ladder didn't reach anywhere near the even the first branch, the one the sticks out to the left of the trunk. So I attempted to pull it up with paracord guidelines (look closely and you can see them in the 'owl's eye view' image). And I almost had it. But the from edge was angled to steeply down, so I tried to tug it up. But one of the lines got snagged and when I pulled the whole thing tipped over and sticks came tumbling down. Thats why you see the sticks tied with green string in the first image, so they wouldn't fall out when putting it up in the tree.

Fortunately my friend Joe, last seen in this blog hiking the Batona Trail with us, had a much longer ladder, and the two of us were able to get it up and secured in place.

So now we wait.