• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

You know when SWMBO gets an idea......

S

StevieB

Nordic Pine
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We live in the middle of a town. The middle mind, not the edge. SWMBO feeds the birds (excessively in my opinion), we have the odd grey squirrel and a few big trees nearby including a big London Plane in our garden that I want to die but has a TPO on it so I cannot help it along. SWMBO then saw a feature on owl boxes in some magazine or other and looked at their website and found the plans. Now it is easy enough to build, but the chance of an owl noticing it, let alone nesting in it given our location and that of the tree is pretty much zero at best. But for a quiet life I agreed to make the box anyway....

https://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/barn-owl-nestbox/owl-boxes-for-trees/

So my question for you more knowledgeable types is, where does one get treated plywood from?! Goggle doesn't seem to know and SWMBO vetoed the idea of one made of OSB, one wrapped in plastic or one with an offcut of EPDM roof (no imagination some people!). I reckon standard WBP ply would be fine but any thoughts?
 
Marine ply should be available but it’s expensive.
If there’s any concrete structures being built nearby, you might be lucky to find some offcuts or skipped used pieces ( used for concrete shutters ).

As the chances of attracting an owl are pretty low, why not use ordinary ply and it treat yourself.
It might last a few years??

Rod
 
I made 2 nest boxes in my garden about 5 years ago from untreated ply. There has been some degradation but they should remain serviceable for another 5 at least.
 
Whatever you do try not to encourage tawny owls anywhere near your house. We have a couple very local and their favourite treat is to call each other at about 4.30am. Beautiful to look at but I am seriously considering cutting down the tree that the hoot from.

We have been trying to encourage little owls with a next box on the side of the barn. About 6 years now and only used by sparrows so far.

Good luck with the box, let us know how it turns out.
 
Thanks All, I can live with WBP and a shorter lifespan - perhaps if I put it up with enough copper roofing nails I can also do something about the tree :twisted:

Will post some pics Andy - but don't expect one of an owl poking its head out of the box any time soon!
 
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