Category: Barn Owls

Last night the female left the nest box briefly to reveal two owlets who, intertwined start chittering loudly to each other. The female calls to them from outside the nest box but they won’t keep quiet until she comes back in and settles back down on them.

Even though the male stays away most of the time he does bring back a lot of food, as you can see from the larder on the floor of the nest box.

The first barn owl egg has hatched, just an hour or two ago. The mother is taking great care of the tiny pink owlet, chittering reassuringly to it as it chitters back. The other eggs should hatch one by one over the next few days.

The weather forecast is good and the male is doing his hunting duty. He is perhaps wisely staying away from the messy birthing business today.

A glimpse of a little newborn hootlet.

The two barn owls are doing well, the female spending all her time sitting on her clutch of six eggs and the male hunting for her during the night.

They’ve been sitting out the storm together for the past twenty four hours and will be getting hungry so hopefully the rain will ease off tonight to allow the male to do his duty.

The first egg is due to hatch on 28 May!

The male (in the centre) has a good hiss at something that lands on the nest box.

A surprise extra egg arrived last night, taking the clutch to 6 (one more than we had last year) and possibly a sign that the food supply is good at the moment. However, it does mean more mouths to feed when they hatch (though they won’t all hatch and those that do won’t all survive good food supply or not, such is nature).

Every hour or so the female gets up, turns around and moves back, has a good stretch then checks on her eggs before carefully sitting back down on them. Today she reveals a fifth addition to the clutch.

The male is spending most days roosting in the other nest box (about three hundred feet away) but usually flies over and joins her at some point during the day. He does tend to sit right down in the middle of the nest box taking up all the space: not sure she appreciates this!

The female briefly left the nest box last night, revealing four perfectly formed eggs. Perhaps one more to go and her clutch will be complete.

The male joined the female earlier today and they settled down for a quiet afternoon together. It wasn’t all rest for the female though: her flight feathers needed some maintenance, the male needed to be preened (whether he liked it or not) and of course the eggs needed checking. Only then could she have a nap.

One more during the night.

Now the female is sitting on her eggs the male has to do all the hunting, but it’s going well so far (much better than last year). Here he is returning with a big fat field mouse.

The female has been a bit shy recently but today moved enough to reveal two lovely new eggs. The video shows how careful she is, delicately moving around while checking the eggs beneath her with her claws.

The female decided to move into the other nest box today, but didn’t bother to tell the male. Here he is having realised the old nest box is empty so he heads off down the field to find her, almost falling off the ledge as he does.

Yesterday something spooked the male, who launched himself out of the nest box without touching the ledge.

Here he is slowed down x 10.

We know this is the male because he then flew into the other nest box where the female was and mated with her. So clearly it is the female who is ringed, not the male.

We hadn’t noticed before but one of the owls is ringed. Two nights ago, one of the cameras on the other nest box recorded the male (we think) sitting on the ledge, clearly showing a ring on his right leg.

We’ll contact the Shropshire Barn Owl Group to let them know, as it may be an owl ringed by them. It would be fascinating to find out where he’s come from.

The male barn owl hasn’t quite got used to the camera in the nest box, which makes us think he’s not been at Tipton’s Croft before.

The barn owls are hunting well during the recent cold dry nights, coming back with a mix of field voles, field mice and other small mammals (and probably a frog or two). In this clip the male comes out and flies off, followed by the female who tries to call for him but can’t make much of a noise because her mouth is full. She then does what barn owls do very well: she swallows her meal whole. Oh yum.

Both the female and the male are resting in the nest box today, after a night of hunting and ‘making eggs’. Predictions are for an increase in the number of field voles this year (‘Barn Owls in 2020: an update from Colin Shawyer’) so hopefully plenty of food, and no need for us to hand feed the hootlets this year, we hope.

The new pair taking in their new realm at dawn before going in to sleep.

At last, and not too late for breeding this year, a pair of barn owls have appeared. They arrived last night with a lot of fussing and mutual preening on the ledge of the old nest box. The female has settled in to the box for the day and the male is probably roosting somewhere nearby. Fingers crossed for hootlets this year.

We need to evict a squirrel from the other nest box to allow the owls to use it as a roost for when the old nest box gets too crowded (we hope).

Independent young female, GSOH, good income (mostly field voles and mice), has own spacious home, looking for similar-minded partner for mutual preening on moon-lit nights. If he brings the food, she’ll lay the eggs. Offer open to single male barn owls only: no pigeons, jackdaws or squirrels please.

We haven’t seen the male for four days, and today of all days the female is all alone in the nest box. There’s still a chance he’ll come back (he might have found a new roost to spend the day in), but on Valentine’s Day he should really be paying his girl some attention.

The two barn owls have now settled into the old barn owl box, having decided the other box isn’t quite up to their standards. The nights are long and we don’t see much of them but occasionally they come out together at dawn or dusk to survey their territory.

The two owls in the dim light of a winter dawn.