New, extremely greed tomato theif

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Vespertino

There's a really obese squirrel I've seen around my yard, we've given him the moniker "Fat Albert". Sadly, Albert has a big family and I'm getting nervous about the welfare of my future tomatoes.

A barn owl would come in handy. But I doubt I'm in the right environment for them (sub-division suburbia) but I'm contemplating giving it a try and putting up an owl house. I know there's lot of screech owls but they're not big enough to eat squirrels, especially rotund ones like Albert.

Has anyone built an owl house and managed to attract an owl to keep the critter population down?

I have at the very least 3 species of owls here.
Screech Barn and some kind of Horned owl.

No owl house.

The owls are one of the reasons my cat has to come in at sun down.

I love to sit outside late at night by myself and watch the critters running around.

Sometimes they land or walk right by me.
In the day time it becomes a Jurassic park with all of the lizards.

Worth

[Vespertino]

Cole_robbie:

I was thinking of getting one, and I probably will if the tomatoes get attacked in my garden.

But I also love owls, they were my second favorite animal when I was a kid. I'd be thrilled to have on living in my yard. I have a sweetgum tree that would make a good spot of an owl house. If I provide them with a house I'm hoping they can provide some pest control to keep my tomatoes safe.

Worth:

Once it warms up I'll have a listen to the night sounds and see if I can hear any. There's a greenbelt next to my house with a stream running through it, but everything else is subdivisions, some cow pastures and a golf course. If I can hear the tell-tale barn owl hiss I'll put up an owl house. Fat Albert would make a tasty meal for a family of owls. We have plenty of live oak acorns to feed the rodents, so there's no shortage of squirrels around here. We do have a few hawks around but they don't seem interested in Albert.

[Axixic]

In this part of Mexico we have grey ground squirrels. They can't climb or don't climb trees. I've never had any bother my plants. Maybe they haven't figured out the plants are tasty, they don't like my dogs or they prefer digging for grubs.

We do have an adorable owl. When I first heard it at night I thought it was cicadas "La Chicharra" calling each other. Before the rainy season starts we have cicadas we call "Rain Birds" that start singing a few weeks before the rains start.

Nope, these hundreds of calls that last all night were the owls. Cutest little animals. They look smaller than most of the varmints but they eat small mammals, lizards, insects, etc.

http://tinyurl.com/Pygmy-Owl

Pictures by Birders starting in Colima and some of the active volcano. Pygmy Owl is in the middle.

http://wingsbirds.com/tours/mexico-c...lisco/gallery/

Along with a couple of friends, I had a pet barn owl in the Army. We found it injured while on field maneuvers. We kept it in a foot locker at the end of one bunk and fed it a couple of times per day. We were always concerned about it being discovered during an inspection. It recovered from it's injuries and we gave it a new home at the zoo in Manhattan, Kansas before we were transferred out.

I used to see some burrowing owls on cattle ranches. I thought I was looking at prairie dog burrows and mounds, but owls would pop out of the holes instead of prairie dogs. I never did know what kind of owl they were.

Ted

[tuk50]

What trials and tribulations we gardeners have! Just read this thread for the first time. My mystery critter once was a pack rat, finally cured that... and the most mysterious like Dwayne mater's turned out to be prairie dogs. Watched one of the little buggers RUN up a chickenwire fence pluck a green baby mater from inside the tomato cage and RUN back up and down the chickenwire fence with it in his mouth. I think he went back to the colony and rang the dinner bell. Still battling them.

Chrisk, I would love to have one of those contraptions, but grandma would have to get more bandaids. I am an old forgetful farmer and would forget to turn it off every time I went into the garden.

[Vespertino]

Awwww man... After doing some research it turns out Barn Owls won't take care of Fat Albert and his colony since squirrels are active during the daytime and owls are nocturnal. So owls would only be effective against nocturnal rodents. My best bet are hawks and eagles, I have seen some hunting overhead during the daytime so that's encouraging. Now I'm looking for info on how to attract other raptors to my yard.

Found a couple nice PDFs file with info on proper sizing of home-built bird boxes so that you attract the right species to your birdhouse:

http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xm...668/ec1556.pdf

http://directives.sc.egov.usda.gov/O...tent=25175.wba

[claherron]

Get some chickens hehe


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[Vespertino]

Yep! That would do it, but my HOA won't allow it.

[Geezer]

My non-mystery varments are voles! These little boogers travel under my black plastic mulch and wreck havoc. They will devastate a bed of kohlrabi overnite, go down a row of okra and devour every plant when it's at the 2" stage.
They like to nibble on the tomatoes- they will take a bite out of 15 just to find the one they like !
The best method I've found to deal with them is the old standby- the snap trap. I use peanut butter and bread mixed into a dough for the bait. Never had any accidents with birds, but did get a chipmunk once.

Every now and then I catch one that I have to euthanize myself. I also had a few traps disappear from the garden........
One day I went out back and spooked up a coopers hawk that flew off with a vole AND one of my traps. My neighbor told me he has seen the hawk watching the garden and he has seen three of my vole filled traps carried off by the hawk.

[Vespertino]

Owls like to feast on voles, I don't know if I have any in my garden yet, but I have the feeling once I grow tomatoes they (or something else) will come. I might put up a barn owl house and a screech owl house just in case. Other then that I'm on the fence about what to do.

I keep reading that a healthy ecosystem in one's garden will naturally attract raptors: grow food plants and native plants with leaving some tall growth and the little critters will come; little critters attract predators (snakes and raptors) and eventually everything balances out in the food web. I'll give it a go, got nothing to loose except tomatoes... And maybe strawberries, favabeans, peppers, etc (it depends on what I get around to planting this year).

Found another handy PDF: this one is for making artificial perches for raptors. It makes it easier for them to skulk, or watch for critters upon which to pounce.

http://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/refere...torPerches.pdf

[habitat_gardener]

Here's a wonderful site that has tips for dealing with all kinds of creatures effectively and humanely.
http://creativecrittercontrol.org/main.php

[mdvpc]

Thanks for posting that link, HG

[Worth1]

I looked at the link and dont agree with some of its reasoning.

I dont keep bird food out all of the time but I do feed the birds.
Sometimes the birds find food elsewhere and wont even come to the feeders.
Another thing is I have woods all around me and it is I that have encroached on their territory.

I love my little opossum friends that comes by at night and the racoons that wander by dont do anything to bothers me.
The trash can gets nothing in it to attract them till garbage day.

I just really dont have a pest problem here.
When I do I will just eat them.

Worth

[madddawg]

Yup, Worth, some of the worst garden pest are the tastiest. but that does not include possums or moles/voles.

[meadowyck]

I vote you get a camera as the suspense of not knowing what is eating the maters is killing......