The Woodland, Flora & Fauna Group Owl Team completed the group’s barn owl box maintenance during the winter months. It took an extremely long time as we had so much wet weather that selecting dry days between for cleaning, painting and repairing any damage made it very difficult. Due to the diverse locations and the amount of work needed at each site, the number completed on any single day was between 2 and 4. With the amount of equipment that has to be transported over muddy fields to each box it always proves a very gruelling exercise.

 

Ladders, paint, cleaning and repair tools and equipment are transported across muddy fields to each location.

 

Over that period we did however, find a record number of adult barn owls roosting in our boxes with almost all containing barn owl pellets. The barn owls and pellets found indicate that the owls are reliant on the boxes for providing shelter and sanctuary during the winter months. The national statistics indicate that 80% of the species now rely on boxes like ours to survive. We always find occupants in a number of the boxes but this year we found a record 22 roosting barn owls in them across our conservation area.

 

Occupying barn owls usually fly out when they hear our approach such is the sensitivity of their hearing.

 

If the weather conditions are favourable and there is a good supply of prey during the coming summer there is a good chance that this year will be a good one for breeding. We are very hopeful that from the 22 roosting owls found a good number will subsequently choose our boxes to breed in.

 

All disturbed owls fly off into neighbouring trees and return to the boxes once the maintenance has been completed.

 

One bad discovery was that 4 of our boxes had been infiltrated by squirrels. This was the first year we had ever found them in barn owl boxes as they had always restricted themselves to tawny owl boxes previously. We have already described how they have destroyed tawny owl boxes and their presence in these barn owl boxes had already resulted in some damage occurring.  This forced us to subsequently spend £50 on bird friendly squirrel repellent and make lot of return trips to these boxes to repeat the application until we had driven them out. Time will tell whether it has been money and effort well-spent.

 

This box was one containing an unwelcome squirrel intruder which can be seen leaping out to the left of the box.