And they're gone

The last owlet had a mostly quiet day in the box. He did seem to take advantage of having all the room with no brothers in the way. He walked around the box, stared at the camera compartment and at things in the box (ants?) He stretched his wings (look at the beautiful flight feathers in photo 3). The flight feathers had grown in just 30 days since hatching. In the evening, rather late (about 8:40pm), he went into the doorway and looked around. But then he popped down again and we thought it was getting a bit dark for him to venture out.
However, around 9:00, he got active again, stretching wings and climbing around. Then he got up in the entrance and sat a couple of minutes, but with his feet safely planted on the inside rim of the hole. Then he did what his two siblings did before, and shifted the feet and his weight to the front rim of the entrance. And then he was gone.
It was too dark to see where he went, but I heard the sound of him crashing into leaves, so I think he landed in a tree. I went to look with a flashlight, to be sure he was safely off the ground from cats, and didn't find him. We can only hope for the best at this stage, but we have yet to end up with an owlet on the ground. One owlet one year ended up on a the compost pile fencing, but the rest have all landed in trees.
We may or may not be able to locate them in the branches the next couple of days, but after that, this will likely be the last time we'll see them. They should spend the summer in our neighborhood, learning to fly and hunt. Then, they'll be chased off the territory to avoid inbreeding, and will find homes of their own. We feel very fortunate that they chose to nest with us again. We've learned some lessons about bee management, and will likely be able to allow bees and owls to be peacefully separated should this happen again.
We thank all those people who watched the screechcam this year, and told us their own nestbox, owl, and bird stories, or just told us how much they were enjoying it. Hopefully we've entertained and educated a few people with this story. Join us again next year. We'll try to send out an update on twitter and the yahoo group when the season begins again.