A screech owl love story
By Mark Faherty
June 11, 2025 at 8:56 AM EDT
For several years, I’ve had a mostly unoccupied screech-owl box on an oak tree in the narrow strip of woods in my backyard. I hung it about 14 feet up, positioned so we can see the hole from the house, and have monitored it expectantly ever since. For years, I had the usual problems of owl box landlords — no owls, lots of squirrels. For the last couple of years, I would get my hopes up when an owl roosted in the box each March, and sometimes would call from the hole. I assumed it was a male hoping to attract a lady to his bachelor pad. But nothing ever came of it - until this year.
This is the tale of a red-morph Eastern Screech-Owl named Ruby Red Cute Cute — my five-year-old daughter named her — and her mysterious mate, a gray morph bird we rarely saw and never named, but to complete the anthropomorphism, I will call him Grayson. From my perspective, their story began on New Year's Eve. I had just returned home from the Truro Christmas Bird Count and heard a screech owl calling in my yard. Soon, two were trilling at each other from either side of the street. With my flashlight, I found a red-morph bird perched about head high in my neighbor’s tree. We know now this was Ruby, though I was only guessing at her sex then. The presumed male then went into my owl box, and started doing a call I had never heard, a soft, morse code call.
Ruby flew across the street and came close to the box, calling back to Grayson. I was ecstatic -after years of annoying squirrels and temporary owl boarders, something was finally happening! The way I assume they got together on that New Year’s Eve was that Ruby found herself without someone to kiss at midnight — again. Her quirky, rom-com best friend told her to forget about her exes and go out anyway, and she found herself in my neighborhood. Just when she thought she’d be alone again at midnight this New Year’s Eve, she turned her head 270 degrees, and there was Grayson, despondent because his mate had just flown off to Europe to find herself. He trilled his way into Ruby’s heart, and the rest was history. If you can’t tell, I’m working this up into a screenplay.
But time passed, and I didn’t see or hear them again. The next time I recorded a screech owl was more than two months later, on March 8, when Ruby appeared peeking out of the box. Another sighting on St Patrick’s Day, then nothing. I was despairing that they had nested somewhere else, and the red bird was the male using my box as his bachelor roost — screech owl pairs wisely never actually move in together. I saw and heard nothing until April 23rd, when Ruby appeared in the box, calling in the middle of the day. Backdating things, this would have been close to hatching time for eggs that she would have laid at the end of March, but I had no idea at the time.
Eastern Screech-Owl in Harwich on May 28, 2025 (2102x1450, AR: 1.4496551724137932)
Though I was pretty sure there was a nest after I saw both of them at the box on May 4, ever a defeatist Boston sports fan, I wasn’t completely convinced there was a nest until my wife Emily saw the first fuzzy gray face of a chick appear in the hole on May 24 — Ruby and Grayson were a discreet couple, but we finally knew we had babies. Emily is not a birder, but she was over the moon. Over the next several days, she spent hours on the deck with her dusty binoculars on her lap, reporting on the status of Ruby and the babies. It was her that saw the first branching baby hiding in plain sight right beyond our deck, sidled up tight against the trunk of a small oak, while being scolded by orioles and other neighborhood songbirds. One night the chicks were begging so loudly outside the bedroom window we had to put on white noise. By the time the three chicks were all out a few days later and the family had moved across the street to my neighbor’s yard, Emily was desolate — my wife had literal empty nest syndrome.
The four days we had with the chicks were intensely fun and satisfying. I highly recommend putting up an owl box if you are so inclined. Some boxes get owls almost instantly, but you may have to wait several years, like me. If you’ve had one for while with no luck and are tired of waiting, I’d suggest throwing a little New Year's Eve party for lovelorn owls.
This is the tale of a red-morph Eastern Screech-Owl named Ruby Red Cute Cute — my five-year-old daughter named her — and her mysterious mate, a gray morph bird we rarely saw and never named, but to complete the anthropomorphism, I will call him Grayson. From my perspective, their story began on New Year's Eve. I had just returned home from the Truro Christmas Bird Count and heard a screech owl calling in my yard. Soon, two were trilling at each other from either side of the street. With my flashlight, I found a red-morph bird perched about head high in my neighbor’s tree. We know now this was Ruby, though I was only guessing at her sex then. The presumed male then went into my owl box, and started doing a call I had never heard, a soft, morse code call.
Ruby flew across the street and came close to the box, calling back to Grayson. I was ecstatic -after years of annoying squirrels and temporary owl boarders, something was finally happening! The way I assume they got together on that New Year’s Eve was that Ruby found herself without someone to kiss at midnight — again. Her quirky, rom-com best friend told her to forget about her exes and go out anyway, and she found herself in my neighborhood. Just when she thought she’d be alone again at midnight this New Year’s Eve, she turned her head 270 degrees, and there was Grayson, despondent because his mate had just flown off to Europe to find herself. He trilled his way into Ruby’s heart, and the rest was history. If you can’t tell, I’m working this up into a screenplay.
But time passed, and I didn’t see or hear them again. The next time I recorded a screech owl was more than two months later, on March 8, when Ruby appeared peeking out of the box. Another sighting on St Patrick’s Day, then nothing. I was despairing that they had nested somewhere else, and the red bird was the male using my box as his bachelor roost — screech owl pairs wisely never actually move in together. I saw and heard nothing until April 23rd, when Ruby appeared in the box, calling in the middle of the day. Backdating things, this would have been close to hatching time for eggs that she would have laid at the end of March, but I had no idea at the time.
Eastern Screech-Owl in Harwich on May 28, 2025 (2102x1450, AR: 1.4496551724137932)
Though I was pretty sure there was a nest after I saw both of them at the box on May 4, ever a defeatist Boston sports fan, I wasn’t completely convinced there was a nest until my wife Emily saw the first fuzzy gray face of a chick appear in the hole on May 24 — Ruby and Grayson were a discreet couple, but we finally knew we had babies. Emily is not a birder, but she was over the moon. Over the next several days, she spent hours on the deck with her dusty binoculars on her lap, reporting on the status of Ruby and the babies. It was her that saw the first branching baby hiding in plain sight right beyond our deck, sidled up tight against the trunk of a small oak, while being scolded by orioles and other neighborhood songbirds. One night the chicks were begging so loudly outside the bedroom window we had to put on white noise. By the time the three chicks were all out a few days later and the family had moved across the street to my neighbor’s yard, Emily was desolate — my wife had literal empty nest syndrome.
The four days we had with the chicks were intensely fun and satisfying. I highly recommend putting up an owl box if you are so inclined. Some boxes get owls almost instantly, but you may have to wait several years, like me. If you’ve had one for while with no luck and are tired of waiting, I’d suggest throwing a little New Year's Eve party for lovelorn owls.