Screech Owl Nesting Complete

Owlet no. 3 (the last of the two owlets that successfully hatched from the four eggs that were laid), left the nest box around 9 PM last night, and successfully climbed its way to safety in the high, outer branches of the nest box tree. The picture above shows owlet no. 3 beginning that climb.

So, that’s pretty much that for the 2010 nesting season. There may be a few more updates if I catch sight of the owlets over the next week. But they won’t be going back to the nest box no matter what (once they've left, they don’t go back - their instincts appear to operate in one direction only in this matter), so I’ll be shutting down the “live” video as soon as I get around to it.

Thanks to everyone who watched, and especially to those who sent postcards.

By the way, over the last month, Google Analytics shows that the site had 11,271 visitors (no, I don’t know who you are), 192,052 pageviews, 17.04 pages/visit, almost 18 minutes average time on the site, and 24.18% new visitors – and those stats are on the low side, because views of the daily highlights pictures are not recorded. Visitors were primarily from the United States (10,595), but Germany supplied 222, the United Kingdom 162, Canda 134, the Netherlands 30, Hungary 27, France 11, Finland 8, Ireland 6, Australia 5, the Czech Republic 5, New Zealand 3, Turkey 3, India 3, Denmark 2, Malaysia 2, the Philipines 2, and Japan 2. (I’ve omitted the 49 other countries that only supplied one visitor in order to keep that list short.) Anyway, welcome to everyone and I hope you enjoyed it.