the barn owls fledged!

I was so surprised to walk into the barn this morning, look up, and see three heart-shaped faces peering down at me. Goodness, the owl babies were out of the box! Somehow I was expecting them to leave the box one at a time. I know that when I looked inside the box there were 4 babies. At first I thought maybe the youngest was still in the box. Could be, but more likely I think one had already left the barn by the time I saw them this morning. I'm glad I took some photos when I did because by late afternoon all three had flown out of the barn to parts unknown. One out over the pasture, one to the trees along the creek, and one was behind some boards in the wood shed last time I saw it. It's not stuck, and it was making threat postures at me, so I left it alone but will check tomorrow to see that it has come out of there.

Anyway, it was hard to narrow down the photos, so here are a bunch of them! According to my book, these guys are 50something days old now.

just a few photos

We had the first super hot day of summer today. On the first day of summer. And I'm already tired of the hot weather. I really think I get wimpier every year! Even Olin got a little melty. This is going to rank right up there among my favorite photos of him.


There are a lot more California Quail around this year then I've seen before. I actually took this a couple weeks ago, but forgot about it. They are so skittish they're darn near impossible to photograph, or get anywhere near, so this was taken through my bedroom window, oh well.


And here's another terrible photo, pardon it being blurry, I was holding the The Beast camera up over my head to try to get this and it was dark outside. One of the baby owls was peering out of the nest box just before it got all the way dark outside. By the time I got my camera and went back out, it was totally dark, and the owl had stepped back, so this is what I got by "shooting in the dark."

barn owl update (OMG!!!!!!!)

I gave up on the barn owls quite some time ago, probably almost a month ago. The female had been sitting for well over a month, I'd never heard babies, and then I stopped seeing her at all. No fresh pellets or droppings or dead stuff in the barn, and not once did I ever see the male. I figured nothing had hatched, for any multitude of reasons. I hear owls at night, but hadn't seen any around the barn for a long time.

Shortly before I left for Blade Show, I was out in the barn and thought I heard something thumping around in the owl nest box. I made a lot of noise, nothing flew out, so I figured sound was just bouncing off the wall or something.

Early this afternoon I was out in the barn visiting the horses with a friend, and I heard something in the owl box again. Noooo, couldn't be. I figured there must be rodents up in the loft or something nesting under the eaves....

Late this afternoon I was talking about owls with another friend, and I mentioned how mine had failed (again) this year, and hadn't hatched anything at all.

This evening I heard the noises again. Curiosity got the better of me and I had to look. I was afraid I would find either an injured adult, unable to leave the box, or one half-starved baby that had consumed all of its siblings. Or maybe a family of rats. I put on jeans and long sleeves, welding gloves, and a face mask (overkill? Yes... But better safe than sorry!) and climbed the ladder with a mirror and a flashlight.

To my absolute amazement, what I saw was four BIG healthy babies, several weeks old, or more? OMG!!! I was shocked. That means not only did she hatch them, and not kill them, but she's actively feeding them despite me not having seen her for weeks.

Here's a photo of their reflection in the mirror. There is one is in the lower left, mostly blocked by my thumb. There is some sort of dead thing on the right that I can't identify, it may be a fifth (youngest) sibling, that would not be unusual for not all the babies to live. Or it could be a rodent, I'm not sure. At any rate, OMG babies!!! :-)

May 17 work in progress, and catch-up

Gaaahhhhh, sorry about that. Bad me for not blogging. Where do I even begin?

Dragon knife: It's finished. Pardon me while I toot my own horn and say it looks awesome. I won't be showing you the finished pics for a little while. See, I don't have the whole knife to photograph, so I have to send my part back to the William Henry company and then they'll send me a photo of the whole thing. But, since I was showing WIP photos, here's one from a couple of days ago:


Blade Show is in just over three weeks. I'm excited! But also not ready yet! I seriously can't believe it's been a year since I was there. Lots of changes this year for me, it really feels altogether different. Flying instead of driving has a lot to do with that, but my table will look different, I'm not sharing, I opted for a different part of the show (I still don't have good shoes, eek!), etc. I'd like to do one more pendant before then to take to the show, and actually there's a lot of prep work that needs to be done. Everything has to ship out about a week before I leave, so there isn't a lot of spare time. And I need to come up with something to work on at the show... that won't need electricity, light, or magnification.

Barn Owls: I haven't seen her for days, and there is no noise from the box, nor any fresh owl pellets in the barn. I need to climb up there and look in the box, but I'm sure that there are no babies, for whatever reason.

Hatching chicks: last batch went in the incubator on Sunday, so the last hatch will be the first weekend in June. It's been a crazy crazy season, and didn't go at all as planned. Fertility problems, weird colors hatching, etc. Ugh. I barely ended up with any BBReds, and ended up outcrossing them to Blue and also Brassy Back because I think they're getting too inbred. What a mess. And now my Blacks (which I SWEAR I have never outcrossed to my other colors) are throwing a high percentage of red offspring, so I guess at some point a mis-labeled Black Red ended up in the breeding pens, and goodness knows how many generations that goes back, so I'm really up a creek with them now. I won't be selling any eggs from them anymore. Maybe this is the universe reminding me that I said I was going to focus on BBReds....

barn owl update

If you've been reading this for at least the last year, you might remember the barn owl saga from last year. It was super sad. There were hanging around the barn. I built a box. They nested. They hatched. And the adult(s?) killed the babies when they were less than a week old. I was told by raptor folks that it's not unusual for first-time nesters. Not normal, but not unusual. So sad. :-(

Well, the female started nesting again about a month ago in the box in the barn. She's super skittish. At first I could barely get out of the yard before she would hear the gate and fly out, but she's calmed down a lot. I've been desensitizing her to noise. Either it's working or she's just chilling out as incubation progresses. I plugged in a radio out in the tack room, and it plays pretty loud all day. Classical music, of course, so I like to think her babies will grow up smart.

I haven't seen the male at all. Not once. Last year I saw the male all the time, he was out there almost every morning. He's distinctly different than her, much lighter in color. But I've seen no sign of a second bird this year, and that worries me. Then again, I don't know why she would be nesting if she didn't have a mate.

So, time wise, the eggs ought to start hatching any day. I thought a heard babies a couple days ago but I think it was a false alarm. I still have been seeing the female owl nearly every time I go out to the barn, though if I'm quiet the radio drowns me out pretty well and sometimes she would stay put. I did not see her at all today, despite having to do a few loud things out in the barn. So either she's really sticking tight, or she was already out... hunting? Who knows. I'm curious to see how things develop, I wish I had a little spy camera to look in there (recalling the "creepy peepy" from bird population survey class at UCD). But I really don't want to climb up there and look. I'll keep ya posted. And maybe one of these days I'll manage to get a photo!

barn owl tragedy

I have terrible news. The barn owl babies are all dead. I don't know what happened, I can't quite piece this together in a way that makes sense, but I'll tell you what I know.

Yesterday morning nothing was amiss. I did not go back out until it was time to feed the horses around 5pm. At that point, I found three dead owl babies on the floor of the barn. They were not near the nest box, they were on the opposite side of the barn on the cement slab where most of the owl droppings and pellets are (the adults perch up there on a beam). It appeared that they had been dropped from that location onto the cement. The youngest was certainly not more than a day or two old, and the others a few days older.

Aside from being dead, they appeared to have been in good shape. Fat bellies, not a mark on them except the littlest one had two (that I saw) puncture marks on the body.

I don't know whether they had died (got chilled overnight? ate poisoned rodent?) and were removed by the adults, or whether the nest was raided and the babies were killed.

Considering the stack of dead rodents that was in the nest box, they aren't exactly fastidious house-keepers. I really can't imagine the adults removing dead nestlings, and from the looks of them they had not been dead long when I found them. It's just the location where they were dropped that makes the adult owls somewhat suspect.

If the nest was raided and they were taken by another bird, why did they show no sign of trauma on their bodies? And why were they carried across the aisle and dropped, rather than killed and dropped near the box itself?

Who would raid the nest? An internet search led to research showing that Great Horned Owls are known to that. Well, we do have them here. I rarely hear them, and haven't for quite some time, but they are around. There is a pair of kestrels nesting about 30 feet away from the barn, but they are such timid little things I can't imagine them doing anything, and they've shown no sign of aggression toward the owls. I have seen Red-Shouldered Hawks chase the owls outside the barn. Could they have done it? It had to have been a bird of some sort. No other animal can get to the box (except me with a ladder). The only birds I see in the barn other than the owls are sparrows, starlings, and the occasional scrub jay.

This just breaks my heart, those poor babies! I can't figure it out though, it doesn't make sense. I'm so sad about this. :-(

I have not seen the adults for the last two days. There was a dead gopher dropped in the barn this morning, so I know they'd been around, and I heard them tonight. I have no idea if they will re-nest. On one hand I sure hope they do, but on the other I'm worried that whatever happened with happen again.

Pardon the badly stitched panorama, but this the where things happened, and it doesn't make sense to me.


Waahhhh!!! :-(

owl update!

Remember a few months ago I built a nest box for a pair of Barn Owls that had been hanging around? Did I ever officially tell you they're using it? The pair has been hanging around ever since, and the female pretty consistently would fly out of the box whenever I would go into the barn (that's a few times a day, what a spazz!) for nearly a month. So, she was obviously nesting. I don't see the male too often anymore, just sometimes in the morning he'll be up in the rafters of the barn.

Well, I'd been pretty worried the last two days. Normally, I see the female several times a day, whenever I go out there. But there was no sign of her yesterday or today, and Barn Owls are pretty frequent road kill around here. I went out there this evening and did some shouting and whooping, but still no sign of her. I was going to drag a ladder in there and climb up to the box, but before I did that I stood under the box and pounded on the wall with my fist. And there she was! She flew out the box. And in the silence, I heard the tiniest softest little screechy noises.

Yes, the owls have babies! I felt bad about scaring her off the nest, but I was pretty concerned that she was missing, and I know she returns quickly to the nest. I'm glad she's okay, guess she's just sticking tighter to the nest now that there are babies. I won't know what's in there til they fledge, I have no intention of going up there and sticking my face in a box of grumpy owls.

I will say, to their credit, I haven't seen a mouse for about two months. They are, however, incredibly disgusting and have crapped and yarfed up pellets all over the barn. And I'm sure it'll be worse when the babies fledge. Oh well, I guess it just means I can't leave stuff sitting around the barn. Gotta love nature... :-)

In other news... there isn't much news. I finished a scrim piece over the weekend, and I'll show you in June what it is. Started another pendant, and hope to finish a few pendants before I leave for Atlanta. I'm SO excited about the show, but getting super stressed about the logistics, expenses, etc. The first time at a show is always pretty nerve-wracking, but especially one that's 2500 miles away!

I shipped out the last of the sale birds this morning. And the last of the sale eggs will go out tomorrow. I'll set eggs in my incubator before I leave, and hatch a batch or two when I come back.

proof of owls

I decided to take The Beast camera out to the barn this morning when I fed horses. Good decision! I hope to photograph the pair together some time, but this morning only the female was perched up high in the barn. She even allowed me stand below her for a few seconds and snap a few pics before she flew out of the barn and landed in a tree along the creek. I'm not sure what they normally do all day. When I was a kid we had owls in the barn, but that barn was HUGE and soooo much taller than this one, so they would tuck themselves up in the rafters and just sit. It's much closer proximity to human activity in this barn!



I had to go out to the tack room in the semi dark of evening tonight, and she flew out of the nest box! Yay!!!!

working in the barn

I spent a lot of time in the barn this weekend. I like being in the barn. The barn on the ranch where I grew up was one of my favorite places to be. It was huge and there were all sorts of nifty old gadgets in there... some of which I wish I would have brought here, like a couple of old horse harness collars. They were not useable, but were cool. Why didn't I bring that stuff? Probably was told not to I guess, hmm.

Okay, total tangent there, sorry, that just popped into my head.

So there's been this big saga with me and bench grinders. I don't know how much of this I've blogged about (versus mentioned on facebook so I'll just recap):

I need a power tool of some sort to use for sharpening engraving tools, because it takes me HOURS of precious time and makes my arm very sore if I have to get a graver from square to super fine pointy all with hand stones. Me no like. Now, the proper thing to do of course would be to get a power hone, which is made just special for that job. But I'm a tightwad and I don't really want to fork over several hundred dollars to buy one.

But I know it's possible to use a bench grinder also, and since there was an ancient one in the barn I thought I'd give it a whirl. I knew it was wonky, it was welded to a stand and if you wanted to use it (I think I used it once in the last 12 years) you had to actually put your foot on the stand (or ideally have someone else to it, because you kinda had to lean all your weight onto the stand) otherwise it would rotate itself in circles. Inconvenient, no? I thought it was a problem with the stand. So I bolted it to the workbench, flipped the switch, and it shook the room. Stuff fell off the workbench, tools on the walls vibrated madly. Um, not good. That's a problem.

So I asked for a bench grinder for my birthday (which is this Tuesday! Now you can't say I didn't warn you!) and off I went to Harbor Freight to fetch one last week, a bit early, yes... Got that thing all bolted down to the bench, turned it on, and it hummed to life. Nothing falling off the table. Ahhh. But then I swapped out one of the wheels it came with for the diamond wheel (what I need for sharpening gravers) and suddenly it was the same problem with tools falling off the wall. Crap! I think the problem is either that the diamond wheel is soooo heavy that it's throwing the whole thing off balance, or the diamond wheel itself is out of whack (doubtful, it's brand new). Anyway, bottom line is that isn't going to work with the diamond wheel, and I've about had it with machines lately.

I will likely keep the new grinder simply to replace the old one, which had some problems to begin with long before it ever met the diamond wheel. Meanwhile, an engraver friend has a tiny grinder set up with a diamond drum, tested, confirmed to work, no shake, very small and light weight, so I'll be getting that in the mail next week and if I like it I'll buy it... or I guess it'll be my new present. Whatever. I just wanna sharpen gravers! Waahhh!

Anyway, after I threw in the towel on that I still spent a lot of time out in the barn this weekend with other sorts of power tools because I decided to build a barn owl nest box. I'd been seeing a female barn owl around sometimes, and lately there has been a pair around the barn in the morning. The downside of owls is they are super messy, and I really debated if I wanted to do this. And I suppose they could be a predator if I had chicks or ducklings running loose. But I already have such a hawk problem I really can't do that anymore anyway, so I think that's not such a concern, and I think their mess will hopefully be offset by their expertise with rodent control. When you have animals, and hay in the barn, and live along a creek, you have rodents...

Unfortunately I have not inherited any of the construction skills that some members of my family possess, and that whole "measure twice and cut once thing" will always elude me when it comes to this kind of thing, but nevertheless I whipped up the ugliest darn barn owl box EVER entirely from scraps and managed to hang it all by myself, so I'm rather proud of that. And sore. Very sore. I hope the owls use it, and I hope I don't regret inviting them to move on in...


scrap lumber................................zero dollars
leftover hardware.........................zero dollars
hours of my own labor..................zero dollars
ugly but functional box.................priceless