My Kestrel Hawks Update

[lilfiggy]

Sitting on the lanai, I heard the familiar screeching of JoJo and saw him flying to my backyard. He landed on a branch, put something down on it and began calling out. Pretty quickly a large fat hawk landed beside him. He picked up his meal, offered it to the other hawk who nibbled it out of his beak. The two cuddled close together and JoJo carefully groomed the other hawks face and neck and then they made whoopee. Wow just like a national geographic show. Well I had it backward last year. I thought the fat one was JoJo and the little one was Josephine. Nope plump one is the female. I hope to have a nest again and some babys. I never saw a baby last year but could hear the racket while they were being fed. Made me feel peaceful to watch them sitting beside one another surveying their kingdom. Hmmm strange absence of squirrels. Have a wonderful day everyone

[DaveL]

I have a family set up house for the last two years. Still have plenty of squirrels, but on two different occasion found piles of bird feathers near my feeders. Guess the slow pokes ended up being dinner. I did also see a young inmature hawk trying to catch some birds at the feeder, but he/she was still way to slow. You are right about it being like watching g National Geographic.

[ako1974]

That's awesome! I love raptor watching, especially during migration. I've been watching a juvenile red tail scope out my woods as hunting territory. I've seen a Cooper's hawk preening in the stream behind my house as well. I also got a screech owl in the box I mounted on a tree...once...then squirrels found it

I hope you get lots of baby raptors!

[lilfiggy]

oh sweet an owl please share about the owl box I would like to try one. We also have red tail in the vicinity. I also have a small stream in the woods behind my fence but dont go back there to many mosquitos and very snakey looking and overgrown.

[ako1974]

You can download the dimensions online. I just bought some cedar boards and built it. The tricky part is where you mount it. You can certainly put them closer to the ground - which I probably should have done - but the owl's preference is higher up and the tree's width should be greater than the box (so I read). So I did 10' off the ground on a wide tulip poplar. The owl did come in the 2nd year, but the issue becomes that once a squirrel finds the box, it'll nest in it. And squirrels make a mess...and owls don't clean nest cavities. They prefer to knock off a few feathers on an flat, empty surface and lay their eggs on that. So if I want to consistently get an owl, I have to go 10' up (in the woods, up and down a stream bank, with my ladder) and clean it out. Not smart.

But it's fun I think I'm going to mount one closer to the ground this year and see what happens. My avatar was taken at a Wildlife Refuge. The screech owls nest in duck boxes in the winter and that one was no more than 5 or 6' off the ground. It was peeking out to sun itself in the morning. Those boxes are on poles with critter guards halfway down.

Owls will start to nest in, say, February/early March by me in NJ, then may take up winter residence in a box in late October/November. So those are roughly the times I would need to clean out the boxes if I've had squirrels. The timing is likely different for you in FL.

[lilfiggy]

thanks arne about 8 years ago when I was still working, a guy in my showroom had an owl that nested on a flat board in a corner of his eave it laid an egg but somehow got broken it was a big owl think I will do this project and have my next door neighbor put it up for me. Knee dr says no climbing ladders and my knees say :you better not LOL