I have been somewhat quiet of late as I am on the road again, going from job to job to keep cash flowing sufficiently to keep me alive until my aerospace startup can keep me busy and paid full time. In the last 30 days I have worked jobs in Manhattan and north of DC; at the moment I have one day of business in Pittsburgh and am staying with the other half of “Browning and Amon” (or vice-versa), a duet from my younger days as a fixture in the Pittsburgh music scene.
Mark Browning, besides being a fellow singer-songwriter and guitarist who shared many years and several bands with me, is also a Pittsburgh zoo-keeper and has used his knowledge of birds and his fertile imagination to invent a product for a market most of us would never have imagined existed: housing for Barn Owls.
An Owl ponders the possibilities of Mark and dinner.
Photo: Courtesy of Mark Browning
Sound strange? You might think so and you would be wrong. Barn Owls, beside being large, gorgeous and fascinating predators also happen to be exceedingly effective controllers of small mammals. Since I long ago shared a flat with Mark and assorted birds and vipers, I realized immediately how useful it might be having some living about your farm field. What I did not realize was just how big the potential market is. To be truthful I still do not know how gargantuan it may be, but it is simply huge. There is hardly a farm in the Anglosphere world (and perhaps later elsewhere) that would not profit from the free service provided by these birds.
His boxes are selling like hotcakes in the California wine country. Sales are accelerating rapidly. Barn Owls love his nesting boxes and growers are packing them into their fields as closely as the Barn Owls will go along with. I would say there is every chance Mark will make his million from warm blooded flying predators long before I make mine off rapidly flying objects of the manmade kind.
Mark with his box and the Pittsburgh skyline behind him.
Photo: Courtesy of Mark Browning
You may wonder what is so special about these things. I cannot give out details I have been told over a few beers (well, not just a few. A lot actually) until his patent is through, but it comes down to a design which lasts and is naturally cooling. It gives barn owls a cool nesting place even if there is direct sunlight. If one happens to be flying around in the neighborhood it will make a beeline for one of these boxes because large enough hollow trees are rare and their old wooden barn homes are rapidly disappearing.
A proud homeowner surveys his cool new pad.
Photo: Courtesy of Mark Bornwing
I would not be at all surprised to turn on Autumn Watch in a year or two and see Bill and Kate talking with Mark about the increase in owl population these boxes have brought about.
I am sure our own Editor Perry deHavilland will also appreciate this advance in Barn Owl housing…
Perry with his familiar, Cadaemus, during his Hogwarts days.
If you are interested you can find out more from The Barn Owl Box Company web site.
Hmm, neither Australia nor NZ, both indubitably part of the Anglosphere, don’t have Barn Owls to take advantage of the nests. South Africa ?
Nice article, Dale. Where I hail from – Suffolk – there has been a decline in the number of barn owls because some of the old habitats, such as big, rotting oak trees with big holes, have been cut down and some of the timber-framed barns have gone. In our family farm in north Suffolk, we had several barns with owls nesting; you would, at around harvest time in late August/Sept, see them fly around into the evening in search of mice and other small mamals. Lovely birds they are. They are very attractive creatures and as Perry’s photo shows, quite tame.
Glad to see the wine growers of California are encouraging these birds. These boxes should be a seller in the UK too – you should promote these boxes to folk like the Country Landowner’s Association in the UK.
Wait a minute… they allowed pupils to have beards at Hogwarts?
Or was Perry just the teacher of Dark Libertarian Arts?
I regret to tell our American friends that (SHH!) Hogwarts doesn’t exist. If Perry thinks he was at Hogwarts, he was probably ingesting substances that made him think he was flying!
Many moons ago, on my trusty Honda 400-4, on the country road between Little Shelford and the M11, at about 4.00 am, I hit one of these things. It came up the fairing and hit me full in the face – it was like being hit with a sledgehammer. Those things are huge!
Quite-a-few-years-on, we could use one or two of these big buggers around our barn, so I will be placing an order. Thanks for the tip.
llater,
llamas
Looks like a nice design. Perhaps I should get one. I understand that barn owls eat “small mammals”, but does anyone know if that includes squirrels? What about birds (cardinals, wrens, etc.) or bats? I could happily do with fewer squirrels, but I don’t want to chase away the birds and bats.
Several comments from the designer of the barn owl box. First, thanks Dale for posting this blog. There always has been a great deal of interest in the barn owl in the Isles and elsewhere.
In answer to a couple of the comments, Australia indeed does have barn owls (Tyto alba deliculata) and plenty of them. New Zealand is one of the few places in the world that does not. And South Africa has plenty.
The barn owl rarely eats the diurnal squirrel, but of course takes all kinds of nocturnal rodents. And yes, I do plan to market the box in the British Isles.
Mark
Actually we do have Barn owls in new Zealand, after deliberate introductions. However they are restricted to the South island at present.