About

Posing on the Owl BoxOur Owl Box

Luna and Leonard are American Barn Owls (Tyto furcata) living in an owl box on our property in Monterey County, California, USA.

We have a video camera1 (with night vision capability) installed in the owl box, set to capture clips whenever there is motion detected. The owls do look straight into the camera on occasion (it sporadically produces mechanical noise), but they do not appear to be disturbed by its presence.

We are not able to broadcast a livestream (a limitation of our battery-operated camera), but our daily “clipstream”2 videos are the next best thing–or perhaps better, since they only include periods of owl box activity. Each clipstream combines all the motion-triggered clips for one day (midnight-to-midnight) into a single video, with a running timestamp (US/Pacific time), suitable for fast-forwarding and/or playback at 2x speed. The total run-time for each daily video varies based on the activity in the box that day. Before the owlets were born, each archive was typically 60 minutes or less. As the owlets grew as nestlings and, eventually, fledglings, there was much more activity and some clipstreams ended up over two hours long.

About Barn Owls

The following resources have been useful in educating ourselves about Luna and Leonard:

History of this Owl Box

We3 installed the box in July, 2020 and it remained unoccupied until Luna appeared in late November, 2023. After a few days, she was joined by a male we named Leroy. They were settling in nicely together but, unfortunately, tragedy soon struck. Leroy did not return as usual one early morning and we noticed later the same day that a barn owl had been hit and killed on a local highway. The timing was too coincidental, and while we could not definitively match the dead owl to the video clips we had of him, Leroy has never reappeared.

A new male joined Luna in the box about a week later, and we named him Leonard.

First Brood

Luna laid a clutch of eight eggs in the first half of February 2024. Seven eggs proved viable, with the first owlet hatching one month later. All seven nestlings graduated to fledgling status starting in early May, with the last one fledging in late May.

As the owlets grew in size and the box became crowded, Luna and Leonard started to spend most of their time away from the box, returning multiple times per night to bring food. Now (May 31) that all their brood have fledged, however, the two parents have quickly returned full-time to the now-empty box.

Second Brood

And, on June 5th, Luna laid the first egg of their second clutch, and by June 17, there were six eggs. Five of the eggs hatched into nestlings during July.

For the latest on Luna and Leonard’s second brood, check Luna’s Facebook Page.

  1. The video camera is an Arlo Pro 3, wireless, with the XL battery option and a solar panel to keep it charged. ↩︎
  2. The term “clipstream” is used here as a play on “livestream” and should not be confused with the commercial video hosting solution of the same name. ↩︎
  3. Actually, Humane Wildlife Control Inc. built and installed the owl box, and did a great job. ↩︎