Richard and Diane Van Vleck Personal Pages The Home Habitat |
None of the many hours of earlier video tapes have been reviewed yet - a project better done in winter. The sixteen days that I did review are tabulated below. Watching these tapes in fast forward the following day allowed me to reuse the tapes the next night. When the older owlets began spending more time away from the nest box, I stopped recording because it was impossible to tell how many feedings were taking place away from the nest box.
Most prey were delivered in the middle of the night. The owls began hunting earlier on nights following a night of poor hunting. However, they likely consumed their first caught prey each night and so began hunting earlier than the prey camera suggests.
The nights when few prey were delivererd were nights of heavy rainfall. This is where detailed weather records would be extremely useful. This may be the wettest summer we have ever had and yet the 5 owlets thrived. However, the amount of prey delivered nightly varied greatly due to the heavy rains. In marginal habitat, such a wet season may have caused a nesting failure.
Again, where hunting began very late, such as Aug 16, there had been heavy rain in the evening.
| barn owl | American kestrel | purple martin | barn swallow | Eastern bluebird |
| tufted titmouse | Eastern phoebe | yellow shafted flicker | tree swallow | chimney swift |
| house wren | big brown bat | Carolina wren | brown thrasher | catbird |
| cedar waxwing | Northern mockingbird | |||
| Yellow warbler | Acadian flycatcher | |||
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