Encouraging Owls

Per Christian has been active with his big hammer and built nest boxes for Ural Owl and Tengmalm’s Owl as well as a platform for Great Grey Owl. We had planned to hang them out today and also stay after sunset to see if we could hear any owls. With there being rain and low cloud the chances of owl activity seemed so slim that we instead went searching for Swans and geese before hanging up the boxes. We ended up using too much time finding nothing of note because we only managed to hang up two out of three before it became too dark. However we hung up the most important ones: the big owls. A Ural Owl nest box is a quite solid and large construction and we only just managed to get it up our chosen tree and would ideally have placed it even higher. The Great Grey platform was erected in the half dark and also not as high as we would ideally have liked but only time will tell if they – PC has definitely done a good job in constructing them and the area we have placed them should be good for owls of all sorts so fingers crossed!

We had no owls when we were out but did have two Woodcock (rugde) fly over and heard what must have been a Capercaille flying out of a tree.

Ural Owl (slagugle) nest box

Great Grey Owl (lappugle) platform