Our Owl Cam features a family of great horned owls that live in a nest box installed 260 feet up one of the stacks at Xcel Energy’s Valmont Station in Boulder, Colorado. Because of the nocturnal habits of owls, we use an infrared camera at this site that operates under low-light conditions and provides images in black and white. In addition to providing streaming video, photos for the day are saved in two-minute increments and are archived in the Daily Pix section. Local time, Mountain Standard Time (MST), is used for these images.
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It's getting crowded in the owl box as the young owls are quickly growing up. As space becomes scarce, mom owl will spend less time in the box -- look for her on the perch just outside the box. In the coming weeks, the young birds will begin to venture on the perch too and test their wings.
Baby owls are in the box. The first egg hatched the afternoon of March 13 after 34 days of incubation, and the second egg sometime during the morning of March 15. We have about eight weeks now to watch them grow before fledging in early May.
Through cold, snow and wind the female great horned owl at Valmont Station in Boulder, CO, continues to incubate her two eggs. We expect to see baby owls mid-March.
Nesting is underway. The female Great Horned Owl at Valmont Station produced her first egg on Friday, February 8, and a second egg sometime Monday evening, February 11. We expect to see baby owls around March 13. Watch Owl Cam during the late evening and early morning hours, to see the male owl briefly visit the box. He usually has a tasty mouse or other prey for the female.
Both a male owl and female owl have been visiting the Valmont Station nest box every night over the past several weeks. We are patiently watching and waiting for nesting to begin. In the past, we have seen eggs as early as late January.
For years great horned owls have lived at Valmont Station along with other birds and wildlife. Originally we constructed the next box for peregrine falcons, but peregrines have natural nesting sites nearby and weren’t attracted to the box. We were pleased when the great horned owls showed up. Previously they nested in areas closer to plant operations. Mother owls can be quite aggressive when protecting their young – on several occasions owls attacked our employees working too close to a nest. With their preferred nesting area now 260 feet in the air, the birds have a secluded spot for raising their young and our employees are safer.
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