Famous owl family starts nest with three eggs in Ennis, Texas as thousands of admirers watch live camera feed around the globe.
A mated pair of great horned owls has returned to their nesting platform in the vicinity of Ennis, Texas where a camera streams their activity live 24 hours each day.
For five years, the pair of great horned owls has raised an owlet or two, and this year they’ve laid three eggs in what may turn out to be an especially successful year for the couple that’s become famous around the world.
The longtime Ennis residents who set up the platform with the live feed and who’d prefer to remain anonymous say the trio of eggs is a first that they’ve seen.
“That’s a big deal for us. We’re very excited about that. And I kind of thought that that might happen because [the owl father] was very generous with his gifts to [the owl mother] this year when when they were courting and he showed up at the nest a lot with food gifts for her, which he’s only done sporadically in the past,” they say.
On a typical day, viewers of the Ennis Owl Cam YouTube channel who view the live feed can literally watch a live feed as the male owl brings a variety of rodents and snakes to the mother so she can eat without leaving her eggs vulnerable to predators. The hosting couple says the owl father rounds up at least 30 rats per week in what amounts to one of the most effective rodent control methods anyone could hope for.
“We haven’t seen any [rats] around — that’s for sure,” they said about the rodent population near their home since the owls have taken up residence nearby.
As soon as one or more of the eggs hatch each year, the feedings become frequent and intensive. Viewers have the chance to watch the young grow to maturity in the short few months that the owl pair raises them and eventually teaches them how to hunt.
The feed captures everything, from the mother sleeping whenever she gets a chance, to the male coming and going as he brings food, and even the potential threats the two face such as when a worrisome interaction occurred with a juvenile hawk who approached the mother earlier this season.
“Since she has started brooding, two different times a hawk showed up in the tree and one time, lunged at her a little bit. He didn’t get within three feet of her but he had intention” the couple says. “I talked to a friend of mine who is a federally licensed raptor handler, and he specializes in hawks and eagles, and he said it’s probably an immature hawk and probably doesn’t pose a serious threat and even if it stayed with his heart set on the nest, the owl could probably still take care of business.”
The couple who set up the nesting area with the live camera say they’ve had a place for owls since 2012, but no owls took advantage of their accommodations until 2017. Now in five of the last six years, the same owl couple has returned to the nesting area created out of chicken wire and scrap wood to raise a brood.
The couple also says the owls’ success so far this year prompts them to remind the public to never under any circumstances use rodenticides or rat poison, because anything that a rodent eats may ultimately be consumed by other animals and kill or harm species that prey on the poisoned rodents or scavenge their toxic corpses.
“Please don’t use poisons,” they say. “And it’s not even just for the owls. It would it would break my heart to see something happened to them. But honestly, we’re all part of the food chain. And if you start adding poison to it, it has unintended consequences that are heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking — nobody would think that they’re poisoning an owl, and that and that actually happens relatively often. It’s terrible.”
For all with thirty-foot tall trees who want to attract owls to their property, the Ennis couple says it takes very little skill to set everything up. For their nest, they downloaded a guide on building a great horned owl nesting platform available on Scribd.
“You can go on the internet and look under great horned owl nest. It’s actually simple. You build a three foot cone with chicken wire to line it with, a three foot cone of tar paper. And then you put twigs and sticks in it and attach it to the tree,” they say.
The couple says they’re happy to bring the Ennis Owl Cam live feed to those who take a break from their daily routine to watch a few minutes and catch up on what’s going on. They also post especially interesting or thrilling excerpts of the feed for anyone who wasn’t able to catch the activity live, both on their YouTube channel and on an Ennis Owl Cam Facebook page that’s accrued more than 7,000 followers.
They say that the years that they’ve been able to offer a chance for people around the planet to see a nesting pair of owls through Ennis Owl Cam has been rewarding, and the response from viewers has moved them emotionally. In a 2021 interview with Waxahachie 360, the couple said they’ve heard back from one viewer who’d lost her husband and was plunged by grief into deep depression.
“She was so heartbroken, she didn’t really leave her house. And she said watching the owls gave her a spot of joy — it helped her get through a rough period. That’s a lovely gift for her,” they said in 2021. “Seeing the owls up close makes people connect a little bit more with the natural world. As a society, we’re going so fast; we’re rushing around with our heads down. And frequently, people don’t get a chance to just recognize the beauty that’s around. And if this allows some people the opportunity to connect with that beauty, that would be lovely.”
Because owls are timid and prefer to remain far away from humans, the Ennis couple has stayed anonymous and keeps the location of the nest undisclosed. They fear that even the best intentions of people who’d like to see the owls live and in-person could frighten the mother owl and prevent her from returning. For this reason, they may make this year the last for Ennis Owl Cam but say they may reconsider if everything remains copacetic.