At 4:14 PM -0800 2/3/98, Kelly Cassidy wrote:
<Barn Owls are rare in cities,

and
At 11:18 AM -0500 2/4/98, Bbsenturia at aol.com wrote:
> She
>asked if putting a structure/box in another nearby barn might keep the Barn
>Owl in the neighborhood - or if there was anything else she might do to
>'mitigate' the situation.

Kelly's comment got my attention, because before I moved out here to the
forest west of Olywa, I lived in a (small) city that had *lots* of barn
owls. The city of Davis, CA, in cooperation with the Yolo Audubon Society,
has a very successful barn owl- nest box program. Yolo Audubon builds 'em,
and the city uses their cherry pickers to put 'em up. And the owls love
'em, and use every one. I would suspect that lack of barn owls in cities
has more to do with lack of appropriate nest sites than any aversion to
cities on the part of the owls. So if you have an owl how has lost it's
nest, providing an alternate would probably work just fine, if the owl
hasn't already moved on.

Just a word of warning to anyone thinking of putting one up near their
house: barn owlets are **loud**, and they are loud *all* night long. I had
a friend who's mother wanted to be rid of her neighborhood owl family (who
weren't nesting in a city provided box, btw), and she didn't care how it
was done. Consider putting a box well away from houses; trees in parking
lots were used in Davis.

Rob Saecker
Olympia