Category: Animals

Two eggs have hatched so far and the little pink scrawny owlets appear to be doing well. Three eggs to go (we didn’t realise there were five!).

The male has clearly learned how to do things right, as the female has just laid her first egg which she is now tenderly caring for.

The male barn owl is a little inexperienced. It’s good he brings back some food for the female but he has to learn to put it down before he can get on with the business of making little owls.

Extra camera fitted on ledge to try to read the leg ring number on one of the owls. Let’s see if it works…

Success! We now know the whole leg ring number and have identified the barn owl having hatched last year at a nesting site only about four miles from us.

The barn owls are at it already and there’s no doubt which one is the male. Several times a day too, so at this rate we should be seeing the first egg in a few days.

It’s now getting a little confusing. Today there are two owls in the nest box but one of them doesn’t have a ring on its leg so isn’t one of the two owls who have been visiting this week. So we now have at least three owls.

The two owls who have each been visiting the nest box seem to know each other a little better than we thought. They’re actually a pair and clearly like the nest box so fingers crossed that they settle in and do what owls do in spring!

The new owl has settled in for the day and has time to bring up an owl ‘pellet’. This is perfectly normal behaviour: it’s the undigestible remains of its last meal (such as a field vole or mouse). If the owl stays, within a few weeks the bottom of the nest box will disappear under a thick layer of these pellets. Lovely!

After a few weeks of an empty nest we had a visitor last night. Though a brief appearance, it was long enough to not only see the tag on the owl’s leg but also read its number, so hopefully we’ll know whether it is one of our previous owls or a new one. If it is new we’ll find out where it’s come from!

Two days later and another owl appears in the nest box. This one also ringed on the same leg but the number is different. Unfortunately we can’t read the whole number so won’t be able to tell where it’s come from.