Category: Barn Owls

The first egg has hatched and there’s a little pink wriggly thing under the mother.

Even before the egg was hatched the owlet and mother were talking to each. Here you can hear them chittering away the night before: when the mother moves you can see the cracked egg on the right!

Update 28 May. Now there are two owlets, clear to see as the mother briefly left the nest.

Update 29 May. Now there are two owlets. Not sure where the adult male is today. There is spare food on the floor of the nest box so the family aren’t going hungry.

Three days to go before the first egg is due to hatch. The mother is being so careful looking after the clutch.

The rain has meant the male can’t go out, so he’s bored. He’s decided to stand on the female’s back.

Fifteen minutes later and he’s still there.

The female’s sitting down a lot.

Tada! This is why.

Over the next few days more appear.

That should be all. It’s more than we normally have and they probably won’t all hatch, and the ones that do certainly won’t all survive.

Last month a lone female took a liking to the new owl box and quickly settled in. Not long after, she started bringing a fella back and they are now officially a couple. No signs of eggs yet but it shouldn’t be long.

19 March 2023. Having set up a third camera on the ledge we’ve managed to work out the leg ring numbers on each owl. The male is a young barn owl, hatched last year at a site five miles from here, and the female much older, almost five years old and has come from a site about nine miles away.

We’ve taken advantage of the nest box being empty over the winter to replace it with a new one, and have updated the cameras too. Now we wait…

We didn’t have to wait long, two owl pellets appeared overnight: proof of an owl visiting to check out the new accommodation, which must smell strange to them as it’s so new.

The older owlet has already dispersed and the younger one comes back occasionally to the nest box, but doesn’t stay. The end to a difficult but successful breeding season.

This evening the younger owlet found enough courage to leap off the nest box ledge for the first time, though rather inelegantly flew straight into a bush. She made a good recovery though and has now flown off to shelter from the rain in a nearby oak tree.