Know-how to Wow an Owl
A home for Strix aluco
October 2024
Almost exactly a year ago, at the beginning of October 2024, I heard a pair of tawny owls Strix aluco close to the house for several days running. “What they need,” thought I, “is a place of their own.”
The images above show a juvenile tawny raised ‘free’ back in the 1980s. I still have the jacket but not the tawny.
After consulting the internet I made a box measuring 12” x 12” and c. 24” tall from off-cuts of exterior plywood with holes in the base for drainage. No paint or preservatives used. The roof is secured with pins and easily removable - although this has yet to be put to the test.
The corners were sealed with self-adhesive flash bandage left over from another job. The roof was covered with the same. These images were taken a year after installing the box and the ‘bandage’ shows no signs of lifting.
Mid October 2024
There is only one decent sized tree in my garden, a mature hawthorn over 30 feet tall. It's position is not ideal as quite close to a road but the road is not busy and not even classified as a ‘B’ road.
With minimal pruning it became easily climable from a ladder with a natural space high up for the box. To provide a secure and reasonably flat platform for the box I secured a metal [Dexion] frame to the tree and fixed the box both to the frame and tied it to the tree. The rectangular object shown to the left of the ladder is the underside of another, small nesting box. Might have to move that.
The prevailing wind is south westerly, so the box was sited with the entrance facing east. Branches and twigs obstructing a clear flight-path from east and north were removed as far as possible. Fast forward to …
October 2025
Time passed. Nothing happened. After a long, hot, dry summer I started pruning hedges and tidying the garden from mid September. Having more or less finished by mid October I decided to check if the owl box had been used so took a picture. After installing the box last year I put in some wood shavings and sawdust, but not the twigs or leaves. These have been added at some stage by A. N. Other as was the man-made item at right in the image. Most of the leaves in the box look like hawthorn but hawthorn played little if any part in my hedge-clipping frenzy. Pigeons nest in the garden and we have grey squirrels. But we also have tawny owls.
Just how many remains to be seen - but see the next page.
“Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note.”
Duncan Linklater © 2025