MBCP Team Finds Barn Owl Nest, First for Carroll County in Five Years
American Barn Owls have been confirmed to be nesting in Carroll County for the first time in five years by Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership’s (MBCP) monitoring team. This exciting observation is even more notable since this pair has chosen to nest in an MBCP nest box installed just this past winter. This is the first barn owl nest recorded in Carroll County since 2021, and one of very few Carroll County nests documented since the 1983 breeding bird atlas. This is yet another illustration of how critical MBCP’s nest box installations are to maintaining this iconic farmland raptor in Maryland. Barn owls are one of Maryland's most endangered birds, and MBCP has been identifying suitable habitat for them and installing nest boxes in those locations across the state.
The first confirmed American Barn Owl nest in Carroll County since 2021. Image courtesy of MBCP.
Providing nest boxes for barn owls allows our team to monitor how many eggs they lay, how many chicks hatch, and how many chicks fledge. These nest boxes also provide an opportunity to place metal bands with a unique identifier on the owls’ legs, done by trained and permitted professionals. By banding the birds, we’re able to identify those individuals throughout their life, comparable to a social security number. If a banded bird is ever found elsewhere then the bands will let us know invaluable information like how old the owls are and where they came from.
MBCP is excited to continue monitoring this nest and will share any updates on this developing family of owls, so let's keep this great work going! Please consider giving a gift to MBCP and supporting bird conservation in Maryland.