by Annette Balfour Lynn
“Our Nature Recovery group started meeting during lockdown, when more of us had time on our hands than usual. The Zoom meetings focused on speakers with local knowledge of this beautiful, secretive part of the Weald and our aims were to enhance and improve this area for everyone living here and to support and encourage wildlife, essential for harmony in the countryside.
One of our first projects was a talk by Terry Hallahan from the Sussex Barn Owl Study Group, and with the help and support from the High Weald Nature and Community Fund, owl nesting boxes were erected in a wildlife corridor stretching from Cousley Wood to Ticehurst, Stonegate to Wadhurst in suitable locations identified by the Nature Recovery group and the Barn Owl Trust.
When Terry and his team arrived, the team looked over my back garden at the field beyond and pronounced it to be the perfect site. It is a large sloping field with a clump of trees over a dew pond. There is a stream at the edge of the field bordered by trees. Barn Owls need open countryside to enable them to hunt their prey. The field belonged to my neighbour’s farm who gave permission for the nesting box to be erected on an oak tree over the dew pond. The area in which a Barn Owl lives is now called its ‘home range’ as the owls do not try to defend the area from others of their own species.
The first year there was no sign of any activity, though I walked past the box many times hoping for a sight of the owls. This year was different. When I walked past in the spring, I heard what I can only describe as a drumming vibration, and in the early summer twilight I saw a Barn Owl swooping over its prey. My neighbours who live above me could see the parent owls hunting as they hovered and swooped.
The team arrived in June and put up a ladder to access the box and to everyone’s delight there were five owlets. They were covered in white feathers surrounding their heart shaped faces and looked bigger than they are. They were completely docile whilst being measured, weighed and ringed, seeming not to be the least disturbed by being handled by humans for the first time. Though there was no sign of the parents, we knew they were not far away, lurking in the trees and anxious for the fledgling owls.
The team were thrilled to find the five sturdy owlets as nests are sometimes found abandoned, with not more than one or two. Other owl boxes in the study had evidence of breeding, abandoned eggs and some owlets.
After this event, I hoped for more sightings and even to see the owlets take off on their first flight, but apart from seeing the parent owls a couple of times, there were no more sightings.
Providing owl nesting boxes is essential for the Barn Owls to breed. They used to nest in old trees, which have now rotted or been chopped down, then they found farm barns suitable for breeding, hence the name Barn Owl, but sadly many barns are now converted into living accommodation.
There are many hazards that a young owl has to navigate when leaving the nest and their lifespan can be very short. They can starve, their natural habitat of open fields and barns to nest in are a vanishing commodity. They can drown in water when washing themselves and get poisoned by bait put out by farmers for rats.
The Barn Owls have to work hard for their offspring. As the owlets grow and get hungry, they need up to four voles or mice a day each, and the parents have to feed themselves as well. They eat the entire prey items, but do not digest the fur or bone, which is regurgitated in the form of a pellet. This works out to nearly 4,000 items of prey for the owls to find to feed themselves and their offspring. Bad weather can hinder hunting for food, which can lead to starvation.
Sadly because of the disappearing habitats, Barn Owls are a diminishing species, and they need the nesting boxes to survive, and also the right terrain. After the successful hatching of the five owlets, I could see why the field was a perfect spot. It gave the owls a vista of a large expanse of tufty grass, which is sometimes grazed or left fallow, which allowed them to hunt, swoop and hover over their prey.
The owls start hunting when they are 8-14 weeks old and mostly rely on sound to locate their prey. Their perfect sculpted plumage feathers are not waterproof and bad weather will hinder their hunting. I feared for those adorable owlets during the relentless rain we have had this year. They are ready to leave the nest between 40 and 60 days after hatching and hang out of the nesting box for a while before taking their first fledgling flight.
The Barn Owl Trust website has all the information needed if you think you have a suitable site for a nesting box, and owl nesting boxes can be obtained from them and there are other websites showing how to make nesting boxes, as they are specific to the needs of the breeding pair of owls.
More wildlife corridors are needed to bulk up the numbers of breeding Barn Owls. Many of the schemes have been successful, and in some areas, the numbers of breeding pairs are on the rise, but more work needs to be done to help them, and other species survive in a world where indigenous wildlife is under threat from the relentless encroaching march of human industrialisation across the world.
However, I hope those five adorable owlets survived and now the nesting box has been inhabited, the owls return to use it again.”
For more information: www.barnowltrust.org.uk