Photo Credit: Ste­vie B. / Wikipedia

I don’t know about you, but I really, really don’t like rodents run­ning loose, either in my house or on my property.

Pets aside, rodents are not much fun.  Car­ry­ing dis­eases, dig­ging up the land­scape, eat­ing elec­tri­cal wires, bit­ing chil­dren, destroy­ing plant­i­ngs and crops, and drop­ping mouse dirt all over the house are only a few of the nasty habits of these wildlife pests.

Unless there is a san­i­ta­tion prob­lem in your vicin­ity, an abun­dance of rodents is indica­tive of an imbal­ance in the local ecol­ogy.   There has been plenty of press about the lifestyle that destroys the nat­ural envi­ron­ment.  What we want to talk about today is restor­ing a lit­tle bit of balance.

Enter the back­yard habi­tat at your own home.   By invit­ing help­ful birds and insects, you can keep the pest pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing rodents to a min­i­mum.  It’s one of the basics of bioin­ten­sive IPM (inte­grated pest management).

When it comes to rodents, few nat­ural preda­tors beat Barn Owls (Tyto alba).

Barn Owls are indige­nous to every con­ti­nent aside from Antarc­tica.  They are a rodent inte­grated pest manager’s dream, eat­ing 2–3 rodents a night.   As a mat­ter of fact, a nest­ing barn owl fam­ily can eat more than 1,000 rodents a year.

Barn owls have also been known to eat swarm­ing ter­mites, katy­dids and crick­ets.   Raise your hand if you could stand a few less of them around.

Instead of the famil­iar owl hoot barn owls make a sound sim­i­lar to shrreee, and it’s more like an ear-splitting scream at close range than any­thing else.

Unfor­tu­nately the barn owl pop­u­la­tion has been dwin­dling.    As more land is devel­oped and more trees are removed from the land­scape, the avail­able nest­ing spots have also declined.  In some states the barn owl is listed as an endan­gered species.   Your state or province will have infor­ma­tion avail­able from the Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources.

So how do you do the IPM fix for this prob­lem?   All you have to do is attract a barn owl family.

Attract­ing barn owls

You can make your yard a haven for an owl fam­ily by pro­vid­ing a safe, secluded nest­ing box.   There are com­mer­cially avail­able nest­ing boxes, but build­ing you own is not dif­fi­cult.  There are many plans on the inter­net.  I’ve included a cou­ple free resources at the end.

The pre­ferred habi­tat of a barn owl is large expanses of open grass­land.  Does this sound like most of sub­ur­bia to you?  I thought so.

Since barn owls are cav­ity dwellers they pre­fer holes in trees.  Where trees are preva­lent, most barn owls will choose nat­ural habi­tat over a nest­ing box, so don’t be insulted, and don’t spend a lot of energy on this kind of bird house if you are near forested land.  Focus your habi­tat build­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, say, song­birds or ladybugs.

Barn owls will nat­u­rally nest about one half acre apart.  Depend­ing on your neigh­bor­hood, the owls you attract will eat enough pests for you and sev­eral neigh­bors to see a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion of rodents.  Oh, yes, bur­row­ers beware!

Global Barn Owl Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Map by: Achim Raschka / Wikipedia

Get an Out­door Nature Cam­eras: Audubon Bird­Cam, to watch your owls, or other birds nest and grow.

Please share your thoughts & com­ments.  Spread that back­yard habi­tat love around the world!

Resources:

Dif­fer­ent Barn Owl Box Plans

Scott Spear’s  PVC Pipe & Alu­minum Sheet Metal Design

http://kaweahoaks.com/html/barn_owl_house.html

Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Exten­sion: Barn Owl, Friend of Agri­cul­ture and Communities

http://extension.umd.edu/publications/pdfs/FS795.pdf

A cool book about Barn Owls, their habits ad conservation.