Last night we had a wicked Thunderstorm with hail and the whole nine yards.
I have been observing the Ruru nesting box for a few weeks now and as previously written, the owls were coming most nights with Thor arriving first and then encouraging Thyra to join him whereby he would depart and she would do a bit of “nesting” and then also depart.
Other interested parties
During the day the starlings would descend and one pair in particular started to take up residence and to my horror, remove the wood chip I put in the nest box piece by piece and drop it below!
They started to make quite a nest and I figured that this year there was either going to be an almighty battle at some point or the Owls simply wouldn’t come.
August 31st 2025
This morning I got alerts telling me something was going on in the Owl box, of course this had been happening every morning for weeks and I assumed it was going to be those pesky starlings again, but to my surprise Thyra was there, and while this is not abnormal I figured she would take flight soon, but she didn’t and so I watched her for the longest time and eventually one of the starlings did turn up ready to carry on making the nest, only this time there was someone already in there…..
I do kind of feel sorry for the Starlings because they’d been at it for some time, but obviously I’d prefer the Owls to be there instead, the Starlings will just have to build another nest somewhere else now.
Time will tell if Thyra stays or if this is just a foray into the safety of the box, somewhere nearby I imagine Thor will be roosting and watching, I’ll see if I can find him later.
