Branchchipper
Silver Member
When our current dog (black lab) was a tiny pup, my wife and kids laughed when I suggested that she'd make a good owl snack! There are great horned owls in our firs almost every evening, and one often calls from the tree directly over the open-roofed kennel. The pup just stayed in her doghouse after dark (probably scared by coyote howls), and has lived a long life, free of air attacks.
The great horneds here seem to eat mostly cottontails, but they also "specialize" in skunks (for some odd reason). There are reports of them taking on a powerful skunk smell after some time on that diet!
As for barn owls; for years, we had a mated pair of them nesting in a neighbor's barn, until their "farm" cats hazed them away...
They hunted voles together in several hay fields by flying a precise grid pattern; it looked like they were using GPS, or following painted lines!
We are going to build a box to try to get some back in the 'hood, as the vole population has exploded in the last 2 years, and outside cats are overrated for controlling such things...
For Woodlandfarms; we learned after putting up a few bat boxes years ago that local bats prefer voids in the bark of mature fir trees, and will normally not occupy bat houses if there are decent patches of forest nearby. That has been our experience- there is rarely anything but spiders in the houses.
The great horneds here seem to eat mostly cottontails, but they also "specialize" in skunks (for some odd reason). There are reports of them taking on a powerful skunk smell after some time on that diet!
As for barn owls; for years, we had a mated pair of them nesting in a neighbor's barn, until their "farm" cats hazed them away...
They hunted voles together in several hay fields by flying a precise grid pattern; it looked like they were using GPS, or following painted lines!
We are going to build a box to try to get some back in the 'hood, as the vole population has exploded in the last 2 years, and outside cats are overrated for controlling such things...
For Woodlandfarms; we learned after putting up a few bat boxes years ago that local bats prefer voids in the bark of mature fir trees, and will normally not occupy bat houses if there are decent patches of forest nearby. That has been our experience- there is rarely anything but spiders in the houses.
