Book offers facts you need

to know about screech owls

By Jim Wright

Special to The Record | USA TODAY NETWORK - NEW JERSEY

   With my new book "The Screech Owl Companion" arriving Tuesday, now's the perfect time to reflect on the North Jersey influences that shaped it.

  My book never would have happened without a dear friend who died this year, a local weekly birding event and a blog I wrote for this newspaper.    

  The book, from Timber Press, offers everything you'd ever want to know about these pint-sized nocturnal raptors, plus everything you need to know to attract one to nest in your yard. 

  My fascination with screech owls began when Stiles Thomas, a long-time raptor lover and fellow Allendale resident, phoned one day to announce that if I wanted to see a screech owl, I should come over pronto.

  I did, and he pointed to an ash tree and whispered: "There!"

  I was a novice birder back then, and I couldn't see any owl.

  "In the knot hole," he explained.

  Sure enough, a gray-phase screech owl sat basking in the afternoon sun. Its plumage blended in so perfectly with the bark that I never would have seen the bird if I didn't know where to look. I was agog.

  The following Sunday morning, at a weekly birding event in the local nature preserve, I raved about the owl and said I'd love to get one to nest in my yard. A fellow bird-watcher replied: "Get an owl box. No reason why you shouldn't get one."

  I bought a nest box and placed it eight feet up a skinny maple. A few months later, in October 2004, a red-phase screech owl arrived. He found a mate that winter, and they raised several chicks that spring. I installed a video camera inside the owl box soon after.

   I worked for The Record back then and began a birding blog for the newspaper. The blog's slogan: "With the help of a screech-owl cam, keeping watch on North Jersey's winged wonders."

  To my surprise, one of the most popular topics was squirrels – and how to evict them from nest boxes. I was not alone in my exasperation in dealing with these Machiavellian mischief-makers.  

    When I left The Record, I began writing this column, now in its 15th year, and I continued the blog on my own.

     As time passed, I realized an audience existed for a comprehensive book about these dynamic raptors. I reached out to Scott Weston, an owl-loving blogger I know in Massachusetts who invented a squirrel-resistant screech owl box. Bingo. A book idea was hatched.

   A primary goal for our book is to help provide housing for screech owls at a time when they are losing more and more habitat to development. 

    As Rosalie Edge, an early conservationist and driving force behind the renowned Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, once said: "The time to protect a species is while it is still common."

  The Bird Watcher column appears every other Thursday. Email Jim at [email protected].