Lookee who’s here! Ms. Screech has been in our nest box for a week, poking her cute head out just after sunup and just before sundown. As well, I see her and her mate perched in my small trees or on the wooden fence if I’m outside near sundown. She seems comfortable with me, never skittish and hiding herself when I offer her a cheery ‘Hello!’.

Since it appears that she’s chosen this box to nest in, we recently wrapped the tree with a sheet of vinyl flooring.

We used this vinyl sheet in 2024, after the previous year’s clutch of Eastern Screech Owl eggs were snatched from the box, most likely by either a raccoon or a grey fox. Our original plan was to wrap sheet metal around the tree, but the vinyl proved easier to handle and less expensive. Two weeks ago, when I’d noticed that the owl seemed intersted in the nest box, I also saw on our wildlife camera one night that a grey fox showed great interest in the tree, walking around it and looking up to where the nest box sits. As the owl has settle in the box, I figured it was time to wrap the tree. We’ll leave it on the tree until the owlets–if all goes well–fledge sometime in May.

Raccoons have formidable claws for climbing and our local grey foxes can jump up to 6 feet. The bottom of the vinyl sheet starts at 3 feet off of the ground and the sheet tops out at about 7.5 feet. The vinyl should be too slippery for the crawlers and is placed too high for the jumpers. The nest box is not in the photo; it’s placed about 4.5 feet from the top of the vinyl piece.

The year after the lost clutch of owls, we wrapped the tree and that Screech couple successfully fledged three darling owlets. The camera in the nest box captured the entire nesting process and you can read about that here. Alas, our nest box camera stopped working last summer and was never fixed or repaired. We’ll have to observe the chick-raising the old-fashioned way: from the ground at night and early morning. We’ll observe any goings-on by the tree through the nighttime wildlife camera. I’ll be watching for confused raccoons or foxes as they attempt to climb the (hopefully) un-climable tree.

You’ll notice a strip of black tape on the right side of the tree. It turns out that the tree has widen its girth, like so many of us! The tape closes the small gap admirably, but in the future, we’ll need to purchase a wider swath of vinyl.

All the best to you, little Screeches!!