I posted several years ago about setting up a camera in an owl box. I ended up settling on a power-over-ethernet camera and I designed a box to accommodate it. The first year nobody used the box extensively. The second year and for a few years afterward, a screech owl started using the box to roost in winter/early spring and to cache food.
Right after the local screech owl took up residence in the box at the end of last year, the camera died. In part because I was uninterested in climbing a ladder into a tall oak tree in December and also because I didn’t want to disturb the owl, I left the dead camera. My plan was to replace the camera in the springtime after the owl moved on. Except…the owl didn’t move on as usual near the end of March. Towards mid-April, I was still seeing the owl around regularly, and even poking its head out of the box in the middle of the day, which is usually uncommon. I decided I needed to replace the camera because I was suspecting nesting activity.
I’m really glad I built the box with a false top so I could access the camera without opening the box. I carefully and as quietly as possible replaced the dead camera with a fresh one (with upgraded resolution as well as a few other goodies) to learn that the box contained a couple owlets! There’s also an unhatched egg still in the box, but I’m super excited to have some nesting activity!
I have a livestream on youtube. The computer handling the livestream is older and the stream occasionally freezes so I have to reset it with some regularity so I won’t post a direct link (that link gets regenerated when I have to reset the stream). But you can get to it from the main channel page at
www.youtube.com/@smorgasbird
That’s very cool! I hope the owlets will thrive. I wonder if there is any hope of the third egg still hatching at this point.
I hope they do well, also.
I don’t expect the third egg to do anything. Those owlets are more than just a couple days old and even if it did hatch, I simply don’t see a tiny hatchling being able to compete with the other two for food when they’re fed.
Ooooh, very cool!
You’re using a security camera for the live steam, right? I did that last year with a bat baby I gave back to the mother after it fell out of the roost in my roof; pointed a camera at where there were resting most night right outside my window. Really wish there was a night vision camera that doesn’t do so much video compression for live steams (and is affordable ><)
I bought it from here:
Bring You Closer to the Wildlife with IP Technology - Green Backyard
While they’re sold as wildlife cameras, I think at their core they are security cameras. The one I got apparently has the ability to have an alarm and flashing lights, which is clearly not something you want to do with most wildlife (maybe unless it’s a bear or raccoon raiding your trash bins).
What I do appreciate about them is that they use truly invisible infrared lights that don’t disturb wildlife in close proximity and that the field-of-view and focal range works well for being confined in a box like this.
It is disappointing about the drop in quality for the infrared night vision, but I think that’s inherent to the wavelengths of light involved to a degree.
I have done some work with satellite remote sensing and near infrared images are ALWAYS lower resolution than images using shorter wavelengths.
Both this current thread, and the original thread, could have various tags applied, such as gear, photography, and video.
The owlets are being very vocal right now! The first time a looked at it, I didn’t even know the camera had sound.
there’s some wing exercising going on right now.
She has stashed a mouse or something in the corner, but now I need to go to bed, and will probably miss seeing them eat it.
if history is anything to go by, it’s unlikely that it will all be eaten at once. but that may be different with 3 mouths working on it.
Someone commented on the youtube feed that they learned of the livestream from an inat email. Just an email with active forum threads, or did a mention wind up in a different newsletter?
thank everyone for tuning in! the last owlet fledged last night and they have moved on to greater things!
