Finally got to see the little dudes from this not so little dudess https://sopuli.xyz/post/42978502

after hearing them for quite some time. Curious how many are there, but not so curious to get injured!

  • anon6789@lemmy.world
    10·
    17 days ago

    That is wonderful!

    My guess is 2.

    Doing some quick reading, there looks to be a surprising amount of studies on Ural Owl clutch sizes. Here is one with some nice graphs.

    The studies seem to revolve around the vole cycle, which they say occurs in 3 year periods. When more prey is available, females tend to lay earlier (early March-ish?) and will have more babies (4 is the normal high end number), while later laying (they listed March 31 as the 0 on their X axis) the number reduces to where 2 is the norm.

    The paper I linked is from the 80s, so I’m not sure how much your weather has changed since then and how that has affected things.

    You may be the first of us to have your own baby owl guests! I wish your owl friends the best of luck and successful hunting to get those babies grown up big and strong, and I hope you get to see them fledge and branch and all that fun stuff!

    • AlexanderOPA
      3·
      17 days ago

      I’m quite sure mine started well in March (that post is dated March 22 and it certainly wasn’t the first day of residence) and I have A LOT of rodents that ate my apple saplings in winter. I guess there could be anything, but 2 are clearly visible.

      Also, apparently, they are cool with me. I was gutting fish like 20 meters from their tree and saw feeding visits like I wasn’t there. Damn I wish I could afford a new good camera, it’s so amazing.

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
        2·
        17 days ago

        I was wondering if they were potentially eyeing your fish, but it doesn’t sound like they go for that from reading a few things. Should be mostly small mammals and maybe some hares.

        They should be able to avenge your apple trees! 😁

        I have had decent enough success, for my purposes anyway, of using a cell phone adapter on my binoculars if you have a set of those. I’ve seen you can rig a setup with some sturdy rubber bands as well. Nowhere near as good as real camera glass, but it really extends the range of my phone camera.