A She Shed for Owls

We happen to love owls so when the opportunity came to create a she shed for one of them, we jumped.

Actually the real story is that we met Emmy Sunshine, a small business owner in Texas who began making owl boxes when she realized that many owls were having trouble finding places to nest. We fell in love with these tall, slender and useful boxes and enjoyed the prospect of helping owls find homes.

The boxes come in the coolest burlap bags and are accompanied with everything you need to hang them: L brackets and screws. You even get an OWL id sticker.

According to the website OwlReach, deforestation in urban and suburban areas is a problem for many types of owls, especially screech owls. These little guys typically look for tree holes made by woodpeckers in which to build a nest and hatch their little ones.

The full name of the box is a mouthful: OwlReach Screech Owl Nest Box with OwlView(TM). A trademark for an owl box? Yes, indeed. Emmy created the perfect size opening to make owls happy — they can roost, perch and keep an eye out for dinner on the ledge. Why not protect your research and inventiveness?

Easy to Install

There isn’t much to do by way of installation. The OwlReach box comes ready in either natural cedar or “Farmhouse Gray.” We chose this gentle gray and liked the fact that it matched the trunk of the tree almost exactly.

The biggest challenge for us was finding just the right tree. We live in a rather tree-challenged part of Southern California so we decided to bring it north, to our friend’s hillside home in Stinson Beach. She has a gigantic pine tree out front with large sturdy branches.

We gathered up a handful or two of dried pine needles and stuffed those down in the bottom of the box for nesting.

Next, we secured an L bracket to the top and the bottom of the box. The bottom of the box has a few air holes drilled into it to keep a bit of air flow going.

After that it was all about climbing the ladder and attaching the L brackets to the tree trunk. You can point the box in nearly any direction except north — true northern exposure gets a bit cold for the little owls. But overall, they aren’t picky.