Our property has a wildlife management tax appraisal rate, which means that we needed to create a plan (which subsequently has been approved) and execute the activities/installations as detailed in the plan. Our plan was heavily influenced by suggestions provided by a wildlife biologist who visited the property last year. Based on her suggestions, we made a plan not just for our parcel, but also for the other 3 parcels that are owned by John’s siblings.
I’m definitely no expert, and John may correct me on some of this (which I will note if he does), but my understanding is that to qualify for a wildlife management tax appraisal rate, you first had to have an agricultural tax appraisal rate for 5 of the last 7 (?) years. Our property had that for years as our cousin Cliff coordinated with local ranchers to keep cattle on our land (thanks Cliff!). But our property isn’t really great for grazing cattle as it is mostly wooded and very hilly, unlike cousins nearby that have flat prairie-grass parcels. And since we are moving onto the land and don’t own cattle ourselves, switching to a wildlife management focus makes more sense.
After John made all 16 of the owl boxes, we added pine straw to the nest boxes because screech owls do not build their own nests. They are opportunistic and only use nests that they find. Lazy little buggers.
It will take another weekend to get all 16 of the screech owl boxes up (so far 9 are up), but everytime we go out to the property, we take a couple more so we can install and document which owl boxes are up and where.
Some boxes went up quickly, and some took over an hour to find a proper tree where the box could be hung according to the map.
And there are definitely worse things than spending an afternoon hiking through the woods in Texas in early December. We lucked out with beautiful sunny skies last weekend and 70 degree weather. Now that the majority of the oaks have lost their leaves, you can easily find the live oak trees. This was a new one we found this weekend.
Thanks for stopping by and checking our progress! Hugs, Libby