Continuing my busy week, today I ought to check on what is happening in my personal Barn Owl boxes, having spent three sessions checking on the situation on Salisbury Plain and the Lower Wylye Valley. My thought was that we were likely to be further behind than the Plain, because they are usually a couple of weeks ahead of us with their Barn Owls. Laura met me at 9:00 at my place. We had to take her car: I have to get a new roof-rack as my old one doesn’t fit. Fortunately, her Kuga has a proper Ford (i.e. expensive) roof-rack that can be quickly fitted, so we loaded up the ladder, ringing gear etc and headed off.
Our first ports of call were two sites on the edge of Webb’s Wood / Echo Lodge. The first one is such a regularly successful site that I was hugely disappointed to find that it was full of Grey Squirrel rubbish. Absolutely no sign of the owls. I emptied it all out in the hope that, as the summer goes on, the Barn Owls will try again. So we went over the road to a box in Echo Lodge Farm. In all of the years that I have been doing this I have occasionally found adults roosting but only one occasion have I found and ringed a brood of chicks there: on the 12th September 2019. So I was delighted to find two of these:
A bit too young to be ringed yet, so we will come and have a look at them again in two weeks time.
From Echo Lodge we headed to Somerford Farm to finish off what we started when my car decided to die on me for the last time. The first box was absolutely full of squirrel drey material, which I had the privilege of clearing. Good grief, it was awful. I wouldn’t mind but: 1) it was cleaned out last autumn and 2) there was no sign of breeding. It is the end of the Jackdaw breeding season, so I suppose they could have fledged, but it really didn’t have any debris I would associate with successful breeding (poo, etc). I did find a bright blue egg, speckled with dark spots. I have worked my way through two field guides since, I can’t find it. It was about 30mm long and 25mm at its widest. Afraid, it got lost in the debris, so I have no photo.
From there we went to the second box along the farm lane: that was the saddest part of the day. The box had been cleaned out in the autumn and, on first opening, there was a thin layer of nesting material and nothing else. Laura had a feel around and found this tucked up in the corner:
She was completely desiccated. There was no sign of trauma: perhaps it has been a hard year for adults all round. We then headed to Upper Waterhay Farm. The first thing we did was check on the Swallow nests. It looks as though all of their first broods have fledged and flown. Under each nest was an astonishing amount of guano! There are still plenty of adults flying and around the nest sites, so I am expecting to see second clutches laid soon. We will make sure we keep a close eye on their progress and ring these birds before they fledge. From there we went to check on the owl boxes. The north box was the first, where we found three of these:
They were so close to fledging, not predated, I would suggest starved. Either abandoned by the parents, due to them not finding enough food, or perhaps one or both adults were themselves predated. Of the three other boxes, the west box showed signs of Jackdaw breeding success, the Chancel box had some non-Jackdaw nesting material, so there is hope there – but no pellets or Barn Owl feathers. The paddock box had a part-built Jackdaw nest but no sign of an actual breeding attempt. All four boxes are now clean and waiting (and hoping) for some Barn Owls to occupy them.
So far, so like the experiences elsewhere! Our next port of call was Plain and Drill Farms (both worked by the same farmer). They are regularly productive sites. We went to the Drill Farm box first. As we approached the male flew out. Holding of breath!!
We opened the box to find the female sitting on four warm eggs! A proper clutch at last. She only caused a little damage as I extracted her and Laura put a ring on her. I was absolutely delighted. So to Plain Farm and a decent chat with Malcolm, the farmer, who is going to put up a couple more boxes for me, and a worker from Thames Water who let me know that there was a water main burst affecting the village I live in. There was I, covered in dust and goodness knows what else, and all I had been looking forward to for the last hour was getting home and having a nice long shower to get rid of the muck!
Anyway, Malcolm suggested we could drive all the way down to the box, as he has put down a makeshift track! He did warn us though about his Houdini calf. She clearly doesn’t like sharing space with her compatriots and has proven impossible to keep penned, so he is just letting her roam around the farmyard:
She really wasn’t bothered by the car. We drove down to the Plain Farm box and checked in on it. As we approached, the female flew out, and we opened the box to find:
Sorry about the quality of the photo but we didn’t want to disturb them from their sleep. Ironically, before we actually opened the box, after mum had flown, we could hear them hissing, and yet, that is how they were.
In the end we checked 10 boxes, three of which are looking potentially productive for Barn Owls: a 30% “success” rate, which is somewhat better than the figures for elsewhere. I have another 15 to 20 to check, fingers crossed! I know that two of them had roosting pairs and I will be checking them next week. So a mixed session, but some good hopeful results.
You will be pleased to know that the burst water main was not affecting our water supply and I had a very pleasant cool shower to clean off all the muck and to cool myself down. Off to the Plain tomorrow: hopefully we will get a similar success rate. Kestrels are a certainty, Little Owls a possibility and let’s hope there is good news on the Barn Owl front.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 