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Barn Owl Nest-Box
2004
As
part of the Carmel Middle School Biological Sciences Project, Mark Stromberg
of the Hastings Reserve, and Steve Moore, of CSU Monterey Bay, assembled
the materials to install a camera capable of seeing at night, as well
as links from the camera to the internet- the owl cam. Carmel Unified
School District provides internet access.We are using a Mac 8500 with
a built-in video board, with "SiteCam" software. Judy Askew,
Bud and the CUSD staff in the maintenance and operations shop all helped.
This is part of the CMS Biological
Sciences Program.
Ongoing monitoring of the owls is being done by The
Big Sur Ornithology Lab.
Barn
owls live throughout the US and are relatively common. Barn owl
nests are often just a shelf, a cliff ledge or a simple box. The nest
is lined with owl pellets and fur from prey animals. To build
your own owl box very similar to the one pictued here, click here for
instructions.
There
are several ways to see what was going on in the OwlCam:
- You
can go to Steve
Moore's archival website that has sequential images, movies, and news
about the nest.
- You
can go to a page of stored Qucktime movies
(~1Mb each) for various times, events.
Brief
History: This box had a single owl with 3 eggs in April, 2003.
This owl was evidently an inexperienced owl, and the eggs were abandoned.
The nest box was empty from April 2003 to Jan 10, 2004 when this pair
moved in.
The first 2004 egg was laid Jan 17 and
by Jan 25, 4 eggs were in the nest. A single bird was in the nest most
of the time after about Jan 17, tending the eggs, and brooding them. On
Jan 27th, the 6th egg was laid. By Jan 30, the 7th egg was laid. The owl
is still sitting on 7 eggs as of February 11, 2004.
The
first egg hatched early in the morning of Feb 18, 2004. By Feb 29, all
eggs had hatched. March 3 finds the oldest is showing feathers and dwafts
the chick last to hatch. The owls are hauling in at least 10 mice a
day, with small piles of dead mice cached. The owl doing the chick-tending
was no longer able to keep the brood underwing by March 3. By March
10, the parent owl was able to leave the nest for as long as 15 minutes
at a time. By March 20, the owls were so big the parent had to move out
to an attached "porch" which one can't see in the camera view. By March
26, the five chicks were completely occupying the box and the adults
were roosting outside, nearby.
You can follow the hatching in various stored movies. Latest update: 3/25/04
Other webcams looking at cavity-nesting birds are found at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's website.