Category: Barn Owls

The visiting heron took advantage of us being away for a few days. A beautiful sight but oh, the poor fish!

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.

The black spots on their chests show that they’re female.

The older owlet has already learnt to fly and last night spent most of her time away from the nest box, leaving her younger sister alone to sit on the ledge in the early morning light, before going for a solitary daytime sleep.

The black spots on their chests show that they’re female.

Out in the early morning rain the two owlets wait without success for food. We haven’t seen the adult female for weeks and the adult male doesn’t always appear often and certainly not when it’s raining. So we feed the hungry wobble-heads until they can fend for themselves.

The black spots on their chests show that they’re female.

Both owlets are now coming out of the nest box in the early hours of the morning to view the big new world around them, with their typical wobble-head behaviour as they try to understand what it is all about.

The older owlet, now about seven weeks old, manages to get up to the entrance to the nest box to have a look out, with the typical wobbly head trying to make sense of what she can see.

The owlets are about 51 days old so time for a weighing, measuring and ringing by owl expert John Lightfoot from the Shropshire Barn Owl Group. This year we have two females, doing well though one rather under weight. They still have lots of ‘baby’ fluff but are rapidly shedding this to reveal their new feathers which they’ll be using soon as they venture out of the nest box.

The two barn owlets are beginning to loose their fluffy covering and reveal their new feathers. Not long before they’ll be trying to get out of the nest box. A combination of the adults and us bringing them food seems to be working.

Hunting is not going well for the barn owls, with the father seldom seen and the mother often returning without food. There are just two owlets now and we have started to supplement their food to keep them going. Not an easy decision: should we leave these wild animals alone?

There are now four hungry noisy pink wriggly things for the female barn owl to feed. That field vole won’t last long.

The barn owl mum has to multitask, keeping the three owlets under control while sitting on the two remaining eggs, holding dinner (a mouse caught during the night) under a claw while pulling it apart with her beak to feed the hungry pink wrigglers. It won’t be long before they can each down a whole mouse themselves, but in the meantime it’s hard work for the mum. We’re not sure where the dad is: if he’s not around then it will be hard for her to provide enough food for the growing brood on her own..

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!