Sunday 29 July 2018

Whats wrong with our Tawny Owl Nest Box?

Our Tawny Owl nest box was 'temporarily' retired last year because I hadn't designed it properly it was difficult to clean out the squirrel detritus.


This pic is taken while dangling precariously from a ladder approx 30ft up a pine tree. 
The box is full of sticks collected by squirrels, so no owls are going to use this... Ideally I would have designed it so that I wouldn't have to climb up another couple of extra feet to open the lid to clear it out, but I built it basically as a massive 'small bird box', and didn't scale up my lateral thinking facilities alongside.

Feeling creative I drew this up detailing all its other problems...


Its been on a 'to do' list for a while, and I was inspired by Kate Macrae's recent Tawny Owl Box re-build described here to get around to doing it.

To make matters worse, in an attempt to adapt it a little while ago, I took the side off (side facing in the diag above) to make a 'cleaning out hatch', and promptly misplaced the whole side.  It is now what could only be described as 'drafty'.  The front ledge fell off too...

Enter Tawny Owl Box v2
Its replacement aims to address all the issues described above, and add some more cameras with the requisite illumination (IR and visible light).  Probably.  Eventually.

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