SANDPOINT — There are times in life when being up a tree might be right where you belong. Tom Stephan found that to be true when, as a professional arborist, he showed up to bid on a tree-trimming job and found a whole, new career.

Stephan, who recently moved to Bonner County, made that business call about 23 years ago in Southern California. Looking up into the branches of a lofty sycamore, he was in the process of convincing the homeowner that it was a very bad idea to simply top off the tree, which Stephan figured had been around since around the time the Spanish arrived in the Golden State.

Noticing an empty barn owl box perched in the lowest extremities, he offhandedly offered to reposition it — up about 30 feet or so, where it would be more effective — if he got the trimming job. The owner agreed, the box was moved on a Wednesday and, by the time she hosted a Saturday card party for a few friends, there was a barn owl nesting there.

“Her friend wanted one and then her friend’s friend wanted one,” Stephan said. “I had nine boxes out that first week.

“That was 34,000 owl boxes ago.”

As his tree service business grew down south, the rigors of the job, coupled with the headaches of managing multiple employees, placed a focus on the barn owl boxes as a way to generate income.

“Age settled in and I couldn’t do 12 hours a day up in a tree,” he said. “Now I’m doing what I want to do, where I want to do it.”

Stephan’s love of birds was passed down by his grandmother, who he said would be smiling down upon him today. He later took up falconry, had barn owls as pets and spent 15 years as a hawk breeder. Not content to know the ways of the winged creatures from an earthly vantage point, as a boy, he took to climbing up to peer into their nests.

“I climbed every red tail hawk nest and eagle nest in the county,” he said.

That same skill made him a natural when he transitioned into tree care. But it was the giant, old sycamore and its misplaced barn owl box that set the stage for what was to come. In his first year of building and installing, he placed about 450 boxes. A research article featuring Stephan’s work at the time pointed to a spike in the barn owl population, which roughly doubled after his boxes came onto the scene.

“I kicked off a peak,” he said. “I call it ‘instant wildlife’ — just add water.”

Not that there weren’t lean times ahead. At one point, he said he was about to throw in the towel when a surprise wave of media attention turned things around in a big way. One of the options for the boxes was a tiny camera that let homeowners watch owl activity on their home TV screens. When a customer took it a step further and installed a second camera with a live Internet feed, people took notice.

“It went viral,” Stephan said. “There were 23 million hits in nine months.”

As people jumped on the barn owl bandwagon, the builder saw his cottage industry explode as additional media coverage turned more attention his way. What started as a sideline venture quickly turned into a profitable business of its own.

“I put my daughter through USC — during a recession — on barn owl boxes,” he said.

Locally, Stephan has put up 10 boxes since moving to town earlier this month. In this new region, he sees an untapped opportunity to swell the barn owl population as even more boxes are installed. There is, he explained, an existing population in both Coeur d’Alene and Spokane, while the Sandpoint area has a much smaller, “remnant population” of the owls. The builder is confident he can turn that around.

“All I have to do is put up a few boxes between here and Coeur d’Alene and here and Spokane and I can ‘bridge’ them up here,” he said.

Whatever the climate zone, crunch time for owls is always in winter, making a summer installation ideal for the birds. Stephan said that the traditional hassle of wasps and hornets taking up residence is not a problem in his boxes.

Having more barn owls in the neighborhood means fewer rodents causing problems, according to Stephan. Voles vamoose and gophers are goners.

“A pair of owls feeding their young will eat as many as 2,000 gophers, rats, mice and rabbits,” Stephan said.

According to the builder, a good starting point for beginning to bridge the owls in this direction would be to install boxes in places such as Lakeview Cemetery, right next door to his home near the Pend Oreille River. The same neighborhood, meanwhile, has no small number of squirrels that call it home. Would they meet the same fate as the rest of the rodent population?

“No, because squirrels don’t come out at night and barn owls don’t come out during the day,” Stephan said. “It’s a non-issue.”

The move to North Idaho already has opened up a new product line for Stephan, who also builds swallow houses as part of his business.

“The market up here is for bat mitigation for people who have bats in their house,” he said. “And I have the answer.”

Stephan “excludes” the bats by waiting until they migrate and then closes up all the cracks and crevices they used to enter the home. No bats are killed — they simply get relocated.

“I install bat houses so they have someplace to go,” he said, adding that the boxes are impregnated with the bats’ own guano as an attractant for when they return.

The passion for tree climbing that sparked his tree service days might be behind him, but Stephan has no retirement plans as a box builder. Quite the opposite — he now is riding the crest of a barn owl box craze he helped to create.

“In my field, I’m at the top of my game,” he said. “No one builds and installs more barn owl boxes than I do.

“I have this niche and I’m hanging on to it,” he continued. “I don’t plan to retire. As long as I can do this, I will.”

For more information and to see examples of Stephan’s boxes, visit online at: www.barnowlboxes.com or call 208-230-9490