Attention West Sebastopol barn owls – Shelton’s Market Garden has four vacancies right now at our luxurious new barn owl bungalows, so please fly on over, take a look, and settle on in. Rent? Nothing you can’t handle – just a few dozen voles and pocket gophers a month!
This is "Chard Chalet" with a view of the chard rows (those humans will leave you alone, they're just very happy to invite you over).
This is "Hilltop Haven" with a view of the whole one-acre garden, teeming with gophers and voles!
This is "Meadowview Mount" - conveniently placed in an open meadow area.
This is "Raspberry Roost" - located alongside the raspberry garden.
All kidding aside, we are very excited about these barn owl boxes, which Mike installed yesterday. First and foremost we wish to acknowledge the skilled woodwork of our neighbor, friend, and farm stand customer Mark Davis, who crafted the boxes for us. We meet such amazing, talented people at the farm stand – and we love that your ‘vegetable purchase’ dollars helped buy these truly locally-crafted nesting boxes!
In researching barn owl nest boxes, Ernie came across a magnificent resource on the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society’s web page: “Build A Barn Owl Box: Modeled After an Original Design by Steve Simmons”, by Charles G. Wade and Lee Pauser, August 2010. This 27-page booklet details the reasons to attract barn owls to the garden, behavior of barn owls, preferred locations for barn owl box placement, and, most important, contains precise plans and a materials list for building the boxes. Ernie handed Mark the plans and said “How’d you like to make me a few of these?” And a few days later Mark arrived with six beautiful barn owl bungalows. Thank you, Mark!
With his usual attention to detail Mike installed the boxes atop their metal poles. We invite you to come take a closer look but here’s the basic process for each box. First, he attached a piece of scrap wood to the backside of the box. Then he ran four bolts through the box and scrap wood, from the inside so that the bolt tops were flush with the interior so as not to injure the birds. These bolts were then threaded through two pipe clamps and lightly tightened. Mike then lifted the box up and onto the pole (which had been set in concrete the day before in a hand-dug 2-3 foot deep hole). Once leveled and properly sited facing west, the boxes were tightened onto the pole via the clamps and a single screw placed through the bottom metal clamp.
Ernie then lined each box with a layer of mixed wood chips and leaves as nesting material for the eagerly anticipated owls. A few pics:
Mike Samuel discussing owl box installation.
The boxes open from the top and side to check for activity and for cleaning.
A comfy layer of nesting material for the eggs and babies.
The back of the owl box attached to the metal pole.
Close-up of the front of the box: the grooves below the entry hole are the "grip grooves".
We hope to have barn owl box updates for you from time to time with news of nesting and babies. In the meantime we’ll get the two remaining boxes installed at our garden parcel on Burnside Road, where we could certainly use some natural gopher patrol assistance. Thank you for your support and for reading – enjoy this beautiful day!
