The Tiny New Zealand Native Owl.
A few years ago I was hanging out one evening in my Stock Yards, drinking a beer and chatting to my daughter, we suddenly became aware of an Owl sitting on the loading ramp quite chilled and observing us as we chatted. I was awestruck, ever since I was a boy I had wanted to see Owls and dreamt of seeing them in the wild but I only ever saw them in captivity and while they were beautiful to look at, for me it was never the same, the mystery of these silent hunters somehow stripped away by their caged lives.
Ruru, Morepork © Steve McGee
Me being me I immediately started wondering where they nest with a view to setting up a camera to try to film them, I quickly stumbled across the Wingspan website and they had plans for nest boxes! Of course I set about building not one, but two boxes. Assuming in my naïve, childlike mind that Owls surely must nest in the woods as I had seen in animated films as a kid, I erected one in my own woods, but then I had the other one and was at a loss where to put it. I settled on a cabbage tree not too far from the house assuming that it was probably too close to the house and all the noises that go with that.
A couple of Years passed and I would hear the Ruru calling but never saw them and there never seemed to be any activity close to us. One Year a big storm came through and took out a large Gum tree in the woods which landed on the tree I had mounted the nest box on, the nest box survived, the tree was not so lucky. Upon retrieving the nest box I found only bit of pine needles in there and no sign that anything other than starlings had even visited. Soon after this my awesome Black Labrador got throat cancer and was basically dying in front of me, so I would often sit on the porch, drink a beer or two and cuddle him in his final few days.
I started to hear more and more Ruru activity and so I wondered if maybe, just maybe they had taken up residence in the Nest box near the house. I set about erecting an old Trail camera I had laying around and a few days later was blown away to find that Ruru were indeed visiting the box! And thus started a journey of an almost unhealthy, financially crippling obsession for me and raised eyebrows from my Family.
That Year the Ruru raised two beautiful Owlets and I started to photograph them and film them whenever I could. Once the owlets have fledged the Adults leave the box and roost in the trees around the box and then after a while they all seem to disappear and aren’t really seen, only sometimes heard from afar.
So I set about installing off the shelf IP cameras in the box, and some I took apart, replaced the lenses with “better” lenses from AliExpress and basically went overboard getting everything setup in case they did eventually return.
The following Year around September the cameras started to pick up activity and I once again was in my element.
Again they raised two Owlets but this time I was watching from inside the box, I started to attempt to stream the whole thing which was at time a lesson in frustration. I reached out to and Robert Fuller, an Artist in the UK who streams footage of Barn Owls hoping he would have some pointers but the response I received was tepid to say the least and so I had to muddle through on my own, a real shame to be honest, but hey…. that’s humans for you!
Ruru, Morepork © Steve McGee
This year I switched things around a bit again and I’ve installed a couple of 4K PoE (Power of Internet) cameras in and outside the box, the quality is much better than the TP-Link IP cameras I was using previously, although I still have one inside the box as a back up and also it sends alerts to my phone.
As this Year progresses I’ll add a few more cameras for different angles but I’ll wait to see if they take up residence again, so far it’s looking promising with more and more, almost daily activity.
Watch out for a quick review video of the cameras I’ve installed this year. I think for the money they are really great little cameras and if you are thinking of building any kind of bird box or filming some wildlife check the review out.
