Barn Owl Maintenance Program
Sign up for 2024 Barn Owl Maintenance!
Late September-November is the best time of the year to perform much needed cleaning and maintenance on your owl boxes.
About BOMP
Napa Wildlife Rescue’s Barn Owl Maintenance Program was launched in 2018 in an effort to encourage a sustainable alternative to harmful rodenticides. Barn owl boxes are a wonderful addition to your Integrated Pest Management program. With habitat and prey declining, barn owls are in need of safe places to hunt and raise their young. BOMP will consult with you, install your box, and maintain it annually.
How It Works
Installation
Whatever your needs are, the first step will be to contact us. From there we can help determine if your property is suitable barn owl habitat. If it is, we will forward your information to our Vice President, Tom Clark, who builds and installs our barn owl boxes. He will visit your property on an agreed upon day and time, determine the best placement for a barn owl box, and install it! Shortly after you will receive an invoice from Napa Wildlife Rescue, which can be paid with a card over the phone or with a check sent to our mailing address.
Occupancy Checks
Occupancy checks are conducted in spring. This is when we visit your barn owl box and check for occupants. We take detailed notes of the number of owls, owlets, and eggs. We also note how dirty the box is and what repairs are needed so we can address them in the fall for maintenance. These data are a valuable resource. They allow us to track your best performing boxes and see which areas of your property barn owls prefer. The data are also shared with our BOMP Coalition partners, including the Department of Wildlife at Cal Poly Humboldt, to help us better understand the behaviors of these mysterious nocturnal hunters.
Thanks to Cal Poly Humboldt students, we are now performing two occupancy checks per year for the price of one! The second check is free to you and improves the accuracy of data. With more checks we’ll be able to catch late-season owlets, giving us more accurate data and another opportunity to take photos for you or your vineyard.
Female barn owl protecting her eggs was banded by Cal Poly Humboldt
How to Pay Your Bill
We currently do not have an online payment option.
To pay your BOMP bill you may a) call us at 707-685-5411 to make a credit card payment, or b) write a check made out to Napa Wildlife Rescue and send to PO Box 2571 Napa, CA 94558
Maintenance
Barn owls are terrible at housekeeping, moving to a new nest if theirs gets too full of feces and rodent debris. To keep the owls in their boxes on your property, we need to keep the boxes clean. Maintenance is conducted in fall. This is when we clean your barn owl box and make any needed repairs (replace latches, tighten screws, etc.). Maintenance is another opportunity for us to see what kind of activity your barn owl box is getting. Even if we don’t conduct an occupancy check at a box, we’ll be able to see how heavily a box is occupied by how much debris is left. We are aware of the hazards presented when dealing with barn owl feces and debris, and come properly equipped to do the job right.
Only simple repairs are performed during our regular maintenance. For boxes that are falling apart or need their height adjusted, please contact us and we can set up a site visit to your property.
What’s wrong with rodenticides?
Barn owls are an excellent alternative to harmful rodenticides, otherwise known as rat poison. Rodenticides weaken the rodents before killing them, making them slow and attractive to predators. When they are caught and eaten, the poison spreads and kills the predators of the rodents. This makes the rodent problem even worse, because there are fewer predators to control their population. Instead of using cruel poisons, whose effects spread beyond your intentions, we recommend an approach called Integrated Pest Management. This is a systemic way of thinking about pests in the environment, which addresses the root of the problem instead of only the symptoms.
A key part of IPM is encouraging beneficial predators in your environment. By providing a home for barn owls, you encourage them to breed and stay in the area. Unlike many predators, barn owls are not bothered by others of their kind roosting nearby, so you can benefit by having multiple boxes, and potentially multiple owls, on one property.
Why you should work with us
Our services
We provide more than a barn owl box. We offer Occupancy Monitoring and maintenance to determine the effectiveness of each box, take photos of owls and owlets for you or your vineyard, and maintain boxes to entice owls, encouraging future use.
We are trained & licensed wildlife professionals
What happens when a box needs to be cleaned but there’s an owl inside? Scaring an owl out of its box can be dangerous to them because of other territorial raptors. We are trained and licensed to handle wildlife so while one person holds the owl, the other person can clean efficiently.
We have a federal permit from US Fish and Wildlife which allows us to handle birds and provide treatment if needed. We are also insured for high liability work.
Superior construction
Don’t let appearances fool you! A barn owl box is more than just a box with a hole on a pole. While it may seem expensive to invest in a barn owl box built by us, there’s a lot of work, materials, and time that goes into making our boxes. A badly designed box can do more harm than good for the owls. We’ve carefully designed our boxes to best meet the needs of barn owls.
Tax deductible expense that supports wildlife
All of our BOMP services are a business tax-deductible expense! All proceeds from this program go right back into our organization to support our work for all of Napa’s wildlife species.
To learn more about BOMP or schedule services, please contact our BOMP Coordinator, Emily Scott, at bomp@napawildliferescue.org, (707)-685-5411, or by filling out the form below.
