Barn Owls

 I’ve recently been helping out our local Barn Owl because of an illness in the group. I can vividly seeing my first Barn Owls as a kid in Suffolk in an old deserted wooden barn at Ford Hall Farm a few hundred metres from where we used to live. I was exploring the old farm buildings with my old Labrador, Bonzo, when one swooped down hissing and nearly took the poor old dogs head off it was that close. I realised after that we were probably close to its nest. After that we used to see them on a regular basis and when the farm was taken over and renovated they moved to a nearby hollow Ash.

Barn Owls have been regularly seen in our Cheshire village with several boxes being installed by the Wirral Barn Owl Trust (WBOT). We’ve even been fortunate enough to have had one roosting in a Tawny Owl nest box for several months one winter. A pair also evicted our local Little Owls and successfully bred in a natural tree hollow a couple of hundred metres from our house. 

Last year was a very poor year for Barn Owls locally with the nests being monitored by WBOT producing a poor return of only 17 young. This year is shaping up to be much better with over 50 being ringed in a couple of weekends. On the day I attended we ringed 23 including an impressive brood of  7.

As with all raptors and owls the egg laying is staggered so the young hatch at different times. This is a survival strategy as in times of food scarcity the older owlets can turn to canabilism & eat their younger siblings. A pretty gruesome thought & when I explained this to our two youngest granddaughters, aged 5 & 7,  I definitely saw the youngest one giving her older sister the side eye! 

Barn Owl pulli can be aged accurately by the length of the unfurled feather from the sheath of the 7th primary. As Barn Owls have 11 primaries this is best done by counting 4 in from the outer primary. This is measured during the ringing and processing of the chicks and the egg laying date can be calculated from this. Birds were also weighed and data shows that youngsters reach a maximum weight then lose some weight just before they fledge.

Young Barn Owls can be sexed at an early age by the presence or absence of black spotting on the underwing coverts and auxiliaries. Females have black spots whilst the males are generally unmarked. On older owlets it’s sometimes possible to sex by the colour of the mantle feathers with females having much more grey and the males generally having very few grey feathers.

Above & below: female Barn Owl owlet

Above & below: male Barn Owl owlet 

As A fantastic day out and it was a pleasure to be able to help.