Rolled my eyes at owl boxes for 5 years, now I have a family of screech owls

Back in 2018 I found an old nest box plan online and figured it was just for people with huge properties. My yard in Columbus is maybe 40 feet wide and I have two giant maples. Took me 3 weekends to build one and mount it 12 feet up. Last spring a pair of eastern screech owls moved in and now I have 3 chicks that I watch every evening from my kitchen window. The amount of rodent poop I am not finding in my garden is the real payoff. Anyone else have luck with a tiny urban yard and an owl box? What time of year did yours get tenants?

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gavinperez26d ago

Did you ever catch yourself talking to the owls like they're your weird new roommates? I swear I do that now, and my neighbors probably think I've lost it. My yard is even smaller, like 30 feet across, and I hung a box on a pine tree that's basically hugging my fence. It took two years before anything moved in, and I was ready to take it down and turn it into a bird feeder out of spite. Then one February I saw a little gray face poking out and I nearly dropped my coffee. The poop payoff is real though, I went from finding mouse skeletons in my grill to not even seeing a single vole. Just be patient, I think they like messy yards more than people think.