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Great Horned Owls nest in a pine tree in a park near us.
We went and checked on their progress last evening and saw that the two youngins are venturing a bit from the nest. One was on a branch it must have flown to.
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Cool! We have a pair that nest somewhere near our house (within a 1/4 mile I'd guess). I don't know where exactly but we hear them hooting to each other all the time. They day hunt as well when raising their young so we hear them during the day too. In the summer I always sleep with the window open to hear all the night sounds.
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They've been real vocal the last couple of weeks and now we know why.
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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It's awesome when you get to witness things like that. We had a dove nesting in a hanging planter right outside our door when our son was very young. Every day he'd want to know how the chicks were doing and I'd have to hold him high enough to see them. It was amazing to see how fast they grew, my son still remembers this fondly, as do I.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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One year I had to keep doves from nesting on my bike rack. 
Another year we had hummingbirds nest atop a patio light.
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We have a sunbird nest on our porch that gets used a couple of times a year - tiny little things with quite long beaks to get at the pollen.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Spring is an amazing time.
We have a family of deer that comes early in the morning to feed. Haven't seen them lately but they should start coming around with the fawn soon.
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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Yesterday I saw the "big buck" down in our field. I put the binoculars on him and could see the buttons above his ears. Last year he was 10 points with a nice broad beam. It'll be interesting to see him this fall. A couple years ago he and another near his size squared off in our field. I grabbed my phone to video it but then a doe came out of the woods and walked past them and down the hill behind my field. They decided to postpone the match. That would have been something to see.
Day before I saw 2 does, probably missed the 3rd. I think they're 3 generations. Mother, daughter, granddaughter. I remember when the youngest was a fawn. We'll most likely be seeing a couple three fawns soon as well.
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One spring, a swallow built a mud nest in the corner of our patio.
Three baby birds were cheeping their heads off and keeping mama busy.
Then one evening, I see a rat snake with three bulges leaving the area.
No bird ever tried to reuse the nest, so we eventually cleaned it up.
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I'm surprised that a swallows build nests on your patio. All the swallows I know of around here, build their nests high up, under the eaves or in tall trees. (Swallow's nest[^].) As kids we always wondered how the chicks could learn to fly - how they managed to return to the nest after the first attempt, to make a second one. (I believe the answer is that the parents grab them in their beak and lift them up to the nest.)
Wikipedia (Norwegian) says there are 86 different swallows, only 4 of them in Norway. They are not all like ours. Maybe those who nest on patios could learn something from the Norwegian ones 
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Pretty accurate picture to my nest. It was in a corner under the roof. There was a little flat spot from the trim, so the swallow had a head start on the construction.
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Mike Hankey wrote: and I had considered taking it down but since spotting the owlett[^] I think I'll leave it.
If you identified it correctly then you don't have a choice. That type of owl is covered under the US migratory bird act and as such you cannot do anything to it.
So hopefully that tree lasts until they fly off.
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The last couple of days the chicks (we found that there are 2 of them) have matured, their feathers have darkened and they are no longer around nest as much.
When I said take the tree down I didn't mean while they were nesting, I would not do that. The tree is in very bad shape and I was going to take it down after they were done with it. But since the Barred Owl uses the same nest year after year I will leave it until it can no longer be used. Probably won't be long!
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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They will use it as long as it is standing. I don't think they can figure out 'next wind storm this is coming down'.
On the other hand your house/shed/car/head might not be as forgiving if the tree comes down on it.
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The tree has slowing been coming apart for the last couple of years. We've had 4 dome down in the last 3 years so it's just a matter of time. No structures are in danger if it does come down.
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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Maybe take it down off season and then put up a owl friendly house close by.
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It would take a small tree house. They are big birds!
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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Yes, they keep rodent population down.
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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Message Closed
modified 15-May-23 19:06pm.
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You want protection against catastrophic failure? Get another computer. Nothing beats physical redundancy of the entire machine. If my main dev box where to croak, I'd just switch over to the other laptop, which I keep sync'd anyways since I use it when I go "out of the office."
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RAID is a good start but it is very important to remember that RAID is NOT a backup. That needs to happen separately.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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And RAID introduces its own potential problems that don't exist when you don't have RAID. I've had a controller fail on me, which meant the data on all drives was suddenly inaccessible.
I'd rather stick with a single, large drive, and frequent backups.
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The MTBF of SSDs and HDs are far, far lower than that of a controller. I consider it utterly absurd to use that as a reason to avoid using RAID.
Also - your issue applies only to a striped RAID array. Data from mirrored drives CAN be recovered easily which is the only kind of RAID I ever use. So, even more absurdity. 
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Rick York wrote: The MTBF of SSDs and HDs are far, far lower than that of a controller.
Well that's reassuring. But it still happened, with a controller that was just a few months old, and was only seeing light use.
Rick York wrote: I consider it utterly absurd to use that as a reason to avoid using RAID.
The extra steps in setup and recovery--given the results I ultimately got--make it absurd to me. I'm glad it serves you well, but you need to lose an entire array only once to make you question the value. YMMV, and that's the beauty of it - you can make your own choices. I base mine on my experience. I've always loved the idea and it took me a long time to finally go ahead and do it, but I rather quickly backed out of the whole thing because of this.
Rick York wrote: Also - your issue applies only to a striped RAID array.
It was striped and mirrored. I wouldn't trust striped only, since you're actually increasing the chances of failure. I'm ok with striped and mirrored however since, given the number of drives involved, the odds are getting smaller that you'll get some catastrophic failure to cause them all to fail at the same time. Of course I didn't count on the controller failing, as common sense (and yourself) says, "the MTBF of SSDs and HDs are far, far lower than that of a controller". OOPS.
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