Owl nesting box?

[yellowfin]

Has anyone tried attracting owls to live around your home with an owl nesting box? My wife and I really like them and figure it'd be handy for controlling rodents and possibly squirrels and rabbits. Which species of owl might likely be around in south PA that wouldn't mind being in a residential area? The place has farmland within a couple of minutes in several directions, if that helps. I'll also be doing a bat box or two at the same time to control bugs. Can the two coexist?

[crusader377]

I would think your best bet is buying an owl box for an eastern screech owl (small owl common in most areas), Barn owl (medium sized owl) or a Barred owl (Medium to Large owl). Although I would suspect all three of these owls are found in S. PA, I would try to research which species is the most common locally and build a box.

One thing to remember is that owls have larger ranges than your typical song bird and may or may not use the box. Another thing especially with the screech and barn owl is that the larger Great Horned Owl is a predator for both of them and they will may not live in areas with large Horned Owl populations.

Another option is to build a box for an American Kestrel which also hunt mice.

[tailrotor]

The Pennsylvania Game Commission has a barn owl conservation initiative that would be a good place to start in getting information on setting up a nest box.

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=622800&mode=2

Jim

[Zhurdan]

As beautiful as Owl's are, they may just drive you nuts! From dawn till dusk, WHOOOO, WHOOOO, WHOOOO from the tree outside my house. There's another one across the park and they go back and forth ALLLLLL DAYYYYYY LONG.

[PdxMotoxer]

There are quite a few up here in this part of Oregon but I don't know much about them other than they can be tough to spot during the day.

No so much for my Doberman.
I was walking her couple weeks ago on a nature trail when she started that low growl and hair standing up. (her normal squirrel mode)
Took me a bit to see this but I snapped a few pictures.
This one was huge and omg those claws.

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