Hungry Owl Project - California City builds 6 owl homes cuz rats are out of control

[Liberal_in_LA]

I have never seen an owl in California




Alex Godbe, carrying Wookie, is founder of the Hungry Owl Project, which built the boxes.


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Owls used for natural pest control in San Rafael

Six plywood homes were built this month next to the futuristic, blue-roofed Marin County Civic Center as part of an innovative, and slightly desperate, attempt to persuade owls to police the building's rampaging rat population.

The wily rodents have been wreaking havoc on government property at the San Rafael center. The buck-toothed vermin, it turns out, are a delicacy to barn owls, a family of which can gobble between 3,000 and 5,000 a year.

"Barn owls are most beneficial to man in controlling rodents, because they are cavity nesters and are easy to attract," said Alex Godbe, program director and founder of the Hungry Owl Project, which built the owl domiciles in cooperation with the county. "They are superb hunters with large appetites. Also, the barn owl is nonterritorial, so you can attract as many owls to an area as there is prey to eat."

Thus the owl boxes, five of them mounted on 10-foot posts and one in a tree. The boxes, constructed on Sept. 10, have holes in the front and were placed on the west side of the Civic Center, where experts said the nocturnal birds would best be able to see and hear the rodents tiptoeing in the dark.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/22/BAPT1L71HV.DTL#ixzz1YuLNSGIL

[stevedeshazer]

1. Owls are great.

I live in Oregon and believe me, we have plenty.

They don't do so well in urbanized areas.

[xchrom]

2. I love San Rafael, it is wacky, wonderful place. Nt

[Tikki]

3. There is an owl in our neighbor's tall pine tree...

He has a broad range so he isn't there all the time. When he flies near you..you know.
Quiet but a strong swoosh.
We live in California.

The Tikkis

[lunatica]

4. I've seen them in Oakland

We live at the entrance to Leona Park which is quite large. I've seen them flying past me from one tree to another, and they really don't make any noise.

[msongs]

5. lots of owls in california. try looking at night. they love to live in palm trees and eat cats and

rats and gophers and anything else small and moving at night

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. noooooooooo. Not cats.

:-(

[Le Taz Hot]

6. I've seen lots of owls in the Sierra.

I love natural solutions to pest problems. My yard harbors lots of ladybugs, lacewings and praying mantis' which takes care of my aphids problem. Mother Nature knows what to do, if we just let her do it.

[deucemagnet]

7. Great idea,

but I'd wager that those boxes fill up with starlings long before the owls arrive.