Owls
Last June and July we were lucky enough to have Barn Owls nesting in a box set up high in one of our barns. We had occasional glimpses of white bundles of fluff which turned out to be three chicks. We followed their progress until we found feathers on the ground under the nest one morning. We will never know if the larger chicks pushed it out or it fell out being inquisitive and the fox got it. As time went on we started to see more and more of the remaining two until we saw them running along beams and hiding behind posts. One morning we found one on the ground dead. We contacted the Barn Owl Trust who put us on to the Predatory Bird Monitoring Centre who sent a box for us to post it to them. We did as we were told and two months later they sent us a report saying it was a male and he was emaciated and had died of malnutrition. We were devastated as we had seen the adult going to the box with food. A few days after we found the dead owlet the third one disappeared. We hoped that this one had fledged and had "dispersed" to pastures new.
We have just had a visit from the Barn Owl Trust who put up a new (and safer) box. He was a mine of information and we know a lot more what to do if we are lucky enough to have another brood this year.
