Late February is the time we start to see barn owls out during the daylight hours…a combination of traditionally poor weather, and the birds needing to feed more to get into breeding condition.
One afternoon my colleague and I noticed one owl out in glorious sunshine so sat out of the way and watched her catching voles with surprising regularity.
As we are both keen photographers, we decided to go the next clear afternoon and see if she was still showing regularly, she was. Back and forth over a couple of hours, eight voles taken back to the box. It’s one of the boxes on MOD land that we look after, so we knew there were three chicks that needed to be fed.
A great couple of weeks was spent watching her hunt in the afternoons, and sometimes mornings, and I certainly got my best shots of an owl with prey.
Suddenly…no sign of her. Day after day we watched and still no sign. I was worried that as she crossed a road to hunt, she may have been clipped by a car and killed. As far as we could tell she was a single parent, as we never saw the male hunt, so I was a bit concerned about her young.
I convinced the owl team to do an extra check on the box. As we approached, I was fully expecting for us to find three dead chicks in the box, but no, three chunky, well-fed chicks, all doing well.
The female hadn’t been killed, just changed her routine, proving once again that the only predictable thing about owls is their unpredictability!
