INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) – A barn owl nest camera in southern Indiana monitored by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources is showing something unusual.

An owl pair is incubating a second clutch of eggs this season. Barn owl breeding season usually lasts from March to October, but this is the first time this pair has laid eggs this late in the year while on the nest cam.

So far, the mother owl has laid five eggs in the second clutch, with the possibility of more to come, according to DNR. Barn owls can lay up to 11 eggs per clutch.

This same pair raised six chicks earlier this year. Those birds left the nest in late spring.

“The survival of the hatched chicks will depend on food availability over the next three months,” said Allisyn Gillet, a DNR Fish & Wildlife biologist. “It’s exciting to see them lay a second clutch.”

Barn owls have nested in this same box inside a metal pole barn in southern Indiana almost every year for the last eight years, according to DNR, which built the box to help replace the disappearing hollow trees and dwindling number of wooden barns where owls normally nest.

This and similar nest boxes give owls a safe place to raise their young.