Wild Birds Unlimited Shares Footage of Barred Owl Family
Wild Birds Unlimited’s Barred Owl family has returned. You can visit the family here.
The live-streaming video captures the daily lives of this Barred Owl family, from first roost to final fledge. You can also view highlight videos on the page, via a link to the company’s X (formally Twitter) social media account.
According to company history, Wild Birds Unlimited’s Owl Box was first placed in 1998 by Founder and CEO Jim Carpenter in his backyard, and the first nesting pair turned up eight years later. The box has seen nesting pairs almost yearly since then but it remains unclear if it’s the same pair each time.
This year, Mama Owl began checking out the box in mid-February. Papa Owl continues to bring her a variety of tasty treats, from crayfish to blue jays. The first egg was laid on February 26, the second on the February 29 and the third egg was laid on March 3.
Now that the owlets have hatched, (the first and second eggs on March 31 and the third egg on April 2) there is a lot of activity keeping this growing family fed.
The owlets are covered with a fine down and began to beg for food moments after hatching. The young owls will leave the nest at approximately four to five weeks of age and remain in the branches of the nest tree until they are able to fly at around 10 weeks of age. There is also an exterior camera mounted to catch all the action when the owlets get ready to fledge the nest box. The siblings will stay together throughout the summer and will be fed by their parents. Then, the young will strike out on their own in early fall when the parents slowly wean them from feedings.
Wild Birds Unlimited and The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Cams team invite everyone to help name the owlets, by voting for their favorite set of names. Cast your vote by April 24. Wild Birds Unlimited is the original and largest franchise system of backyard bird feeding and nature specialty stores with more than 350 locations throughout the United States and Canada.