Jim Ward of La Grande has spent roughly 40 years putting up nesting boxes for barn owls

By on Tuesday, January 28th, 2025 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News

UNION COUNTY – Do you know much about barn owls?  Recently Elkhorn Media Group has received photos of some barn owls, including some photos from local man Jim Ward.  During conversations about those photos, Jim shared some information on a barn owl project that he has been a part of for roughly 40 years.

After those initial conversations, Jim sat down with staff at Elkhorn Media Group to share the details of that project.

(EMG) Jim, thank you for taking the time to share some information on this project with me, can you share a little about yourself and how it got started?

(JW) My name is Jim Ward. I live out by Ladd Marsh. I’ve been there for 45 years. I worked at the local sawmill here for 40 years and I have just always been a wildlife person

I just happened to notice an article in a wildlife magazine about the owls and about a person that was building boxes and so I thought, I’ll give that a try. My in-laws had a barn not too far from me and they had owls in the barn, but like almost all the barns, they don’t really have a suitable place for the birds to nest. They end up nesting on a narrow beam or something and they don’t bring nesting material to their nest, so they just accidentally kick the eggs off on the floor or even babies and so I put an owl box up and BAM, immediately they went into it.

Next thing you know, you hear squeaking babies up there and it just went crazy. My in-laws told the neighbors, and they wanted a box, and those neighbors told their neighbors. To date, I’ve got over 100 boxes out. It all started in 1984 and about eight or 10 years into the project, a retired person from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife contacted me, and he wanted to start banding the babies. So, every year we’d go out and catch all the babies, and out of each box, we would have like six or eight babies, and that is a lot of babies. To date, we’ve banded nearly 1100 baby barn owls.

Photo from Jim Ward

(EMG) What’s the reasoning behind banding the owls?

(JW) Well, first, you have to put the band on the leg when they’re small and then they grow into it and then of course, they go their merry way and the only way you can get the band returned is if the owl gets killed and someone happens to find it. So, there’s an address on the band, and they turn it into a national database, and they’ll send a note to whoever finds it asking for the location and all those kinds of things, but out of nearly 1100 babies that we’ve banded, we’ve probably got about 50 returns. However, the main reason behind the banding is to determine migration patterns. Where do the owls go in the wintertime? Do they stay here? So far, we’ve had some bands return from Southern Utah and a lot from Idaho, so they do migrate a little bit and this year we’re embarking on a new project. We’re going to start putting a little radio transmitter on them and then we can just follow them wherever they go.

(EMG) Can you tell me more about the nesting boxes?

(JW) It’s really just one of those things where you can just tack a few scrap pieces of lumber together and stick up a box. But, it really makes a big difference in those birds’ lives, it greatly increases their population, I think.

A lot of people might think, well, what good is a barn owl?  Well, they eat a lot of rodents, especially gophers. Farmers do not like Gophers.

The Oregon Field Guide interviewed a person who has an owl box, he’s a rancher, and he said before the boxes were put up, his fields were just riddled with gophers. They eat the roots of the plant, and it kills the plant, but he said, once the barn owl boxes got installed, he said he gets about 600 more bales of hay a year off of his fields. That’s a big deal with him.

Photo from Jim Ward

(EMG) You mentioned to me previously that this project was starting to wind down a bit, why is that?

(JW) A lot of the reasons it’s kind of tapered down a bit is because I don’t like climbing them big ladders anymore. You know, this started many, many years ago back in 1980s, back then, I was a lot younger and now I go by and I look at some of the boxes way up there and I almost want to start breaking into tears, I can’t believe I climbed that thing with a big box on your shoulder and then the drill in another, so that’s a lot of it.

(EMG) If someone was interested in taking over this project, would that be something you would be interested in having happened?

(JW) Yes, certainly if someone was interested.

(EMG) Are you still building these boxes?

(JW) I don’t really build them anymore, but I give people blueprints on how to make them and they are really simple to build. You can hardly go wrong. The barn owls are really just craving those places to nest so bad that, yeah, they’ll take almost anything.

(EMG) The boxes that you have set up, are they primarily in Union County?

(JW) Most of them, yeah, but through the publicity and different things we’ve had, people from all over the state come by and get boxes or build their own.

(EMG) How can people contact you if they want to be involved?

(JW) I’m under Jim D Ward on Facebook and my e-mail address is 67elkchaser@gmail.com

(EMG) Is there anything else that you think people would like to know about this project?

(JW) A lot of people think or are worried about their baby kittens or stuff like that. The big great horned owls will take cats or small dogs or stuff like that. But barn owls eat pretty much strictly rodents. Once in a great while, you’ll find a lizard or a little songbird or something, but that’s very, very rare.