Concord’s Public Works Parks Division installed seven owl boxes in Newhall Park. These boxes are designed to utilize barn owls for rodent and gopher control, as well as reduce costs of contract rodent control services.
The sites where the boxes are installed are strategically placed in the flight paths of barn owls and are designed so that predators and squirrels can’t enter the nests.
More owl boxes will soon be installed at Willow Pass Park, Hillcrest Community Park, and Boatwright Park.
27 comments
Very cool – hope nobody harasses the owls or tries to vandalize the boxes
Too low!
Who?
To the people who live adjacent to Newhall Park: Keep your kitties indoors at night!
While a great horned owl could certainly get prey as large as a house cat, the much smaller barn owl would not be considered a threat to pets unless you had a small rabbit out at night.
The concept is good…but if anyone thinks Owls don’t like the taste of Chihuahua… think again.
My first thought was some kid running through the park while playing and smacks into the pole. I wish the lower parts of owl poles were similar to the trees that are visible in the background. While they would be more expensive to construct I could see the lower ten feet being a concrete column, much like a light post, and the pole, if needed, and owl box are mounted on top of that. It would both be sturdier and more likely to be noticed. The column could be textured and painted like a tree.
Heather Farm Park in Walnut Creek has some sunshades that use a single post. I’d have to take a look to see if the lower part is a concrete column but the sunshades seem to have held up well despite being in a high traffic area.
The City of Concord is infested with rats, the last 8 years or so has been especially bad where we’ve seen the rat population explode. I hope people leave these owl boxes alone!!! Concord already has a population of individuals who harvest the eggs of the ducks and geese in our parks and places nets in our creeks to harvest crawdads. Now, if only the City of Concord would do something about the infestation of American, Asian, and German cockroaches across the city.
2020
“Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Tuesday that seeks to protect mountain lions and other wildlife from being poisoned by a popular form of pesticide. The move raises questions about how the state will manage its growing urban rat population, which some experts say is surging due to the spread of homeless camps across California.”
https://tinyurl.com/35tu8kbx
ORIGINAL G,
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Thank you for the information and link.
‘Feds propose killing nearly 500,000 ‘invasive’ owls to save Calif. native owls’
https://tinyurl.com/7ew9dbxs
Yep! Right hand has no idea what Left hand is up to. sigh….
There are definitely a lot of gophers and ground squirrels for them to feast on, but I worry that the owls might also go after baby birds. Nothing to be done about that, and since the family of foxes were run out by coyotes a few years ago (and the coyotes seem to have moved on themselves), owls do seem the best way to try to control the rodents. I’m glad to see the city working with nature and using a natural approach to pest control. Hopefully, humans will behave themselves and let the owls nest in peace.
The baby birds are fine cause they reside on my acreage lands. And I have 24/7/400 day a year patrols.
Owls will not find squirrels and baby birds out at night.
they will fill the boxes with Tootsie Pops to attract the Owls…
🙂
Owls = flying cats
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They can be very efficient hunters. Will park visitors be grossed out at the pills of bones and hair that owls will vomit?
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Btw, boxes should be mounted at least 15 feet above the ground and near the field perimeter.
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Let’s hope these owl boxes work better than those poles that were installed around Lime Ridge a few years ago. The idea was that they will attract hawks and other birds of prey who will watch and hunt all those pesky ground squirrels.
I’ve been walking all over Lime Ridge for many years – still waiting to see a single bird sitting on one of these poles. It’s not that birds of prey aren’t there – but they vastly prefer trees and street lights.
What a waste of taxpayer money. Clean up your own yard. Don’t overfill your bird feeders and pet food, it’s not rocket science.
Great, now we’re giving free housing to homeless owls? Stupid liberals. 😁
If the homeless ate rats & mice they’d be more welcome.
@DR. JELLYFINGER…….Marinate them in teriyaki sauce and grill them on a stick, just like Claycord corn snake treats…..can’t beat’em….mmmmm
It works both ways, rats and mice eating the homeless…That’ll work too.
Should those boxes be right out in the open?
It seems to me they will get unbearably hot in the daytime.
High up in a tree with some shade would be better.
Owls are territorial creatures. Not all the boxes will be utilized.
I just hope that the parks and residents stop using rat poison or they will be killing the owls too!!!
Bats can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes every hour or 12,000 per night or 4.3 million in a year.
Some bats can live for around 40 years that’s 175 million mosquitoes in its lifetime.
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How about Bat boxes to combat mosquitos ?
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5292123.pdf
Yeah, Bat Caves save lives!!
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