Owls and Hawks

A few years ago, plagued by gophers gnawing on the roots of our vines, we set up four owl boxes to attract a natural predator of these malicious rodents.  The boxes were inhabited within weeks, and although we weren’t able to quantify a decline in the gopher population, it certainly seemed as though there were fewer.  Owls are shy creatures, but occasionally we would catch glimpses of them gracefully soaring through the sky - a beautiful site to behold. 

Driven by a practical need to further check the damage done by the gophers, we built several more owl boxes and distributed them throughout the vineyard and the woods that surround us.  We have added on raptor perches to these boxes so that we have full time rodent protection.  The owls hunt at night, and while they sleep during the day, Redtail Hawks keep a watchful eye on the ground below.

Farming with nature has many practical benefits.  The one time cost to set up these boxes was minimal, but the payoff is large.  Trapping rodents is labor intensive, and potentially harmful to human health; poisoning them can have disastrous effects that ripple through the food chain.  Inviting natural predators to control the gophers just makes more sense.  The simplest solution, the one that has come about through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, is the most elegant.