Attract More Owls To Your Yard By Breaking This Lawn Mowing Rule

Owls are an important part of the ecosystem, a natural (and free) form of pest control, and a top-tier viewing opportunity for birders. If you're interested in easily attracting owls to your yard, start by installing nest boxes, providing water sources, and ensuring there are plenty of dead trees where the nocturnal raptors can perch. Even with all these conditions set up, it still helps to provide fertile hunting grounds. To do this, there's one common yard rule that might be driving visiting owls away — maintaining a well-groomed lawn through frequent mowing.

To give your yard the best chance at attracting owls, limit your lawn mowing frequency, allowing it to become a haven for tall grasses, weeds, and fallen leaves. Tall grass, brush piles, and uncut mats of ground cover form a litter layer, mimicking the natural hunting grounds for many local owls. Neglecting lawn care is a great way to invite small mammals, rodents, and other pests that will inevitably call a shaggy lawn home, along with the owls who like to snack on them. When combined with the nesting features listed above, you could turn your yard into an owl-viewing paradise.

When looking to attract owls, you don't need to let weeds overtake your yard so much that you find yourself in a veritable rainforest of invasive plant species, or at odds with your HOA. The sweet spot should see you skipping a session, mowing once each month or so, in order to encourage thick growth and breed a healthy food supply for airborne raptors. Of course you could decide to rewild your yard completely to turn it into a wildlife haven.

On the other hand, you don't need to stop mowing your lawn entirely if you like a traditional, manicured lawn. Instead, portion out parts of your yard for regularly scheduled lawn maintenance, to maintain some semblance of normalcy, and parts for the owls. For instance, you could mow half or two-thirds of your yard the way you prefer, leaving a back corner or two overgrown for owls to hunt. This could also help concentrate prey, and allow the owls do their thing away from your house, so they feel safer. 

To encourage even more visitations, try turning off as many light sources as you can, as that may be the reason why owls aren't coming to your yard. As nocturnal hunters, owls thrive in low-light environments. You can always keep an eye on your owls using trail cameras with night vision mode enabled.