Barn Owls - 3rd June 2024

  A look at the CCTV monitored box at Sculthorpe started us off with three healthy chicks and a full grown female that was unringed.

Unringed female, but as the chicks here are usually ringed where is she from?

Asynchronous hatching produces chicks at differing stages of development

Females are usually darker than males across the mantle

Next onto a farm where the BTO had been asked to find someone able to check the boxes.

Here the first box held a single chick with two adults. The adult male, first out of the box, was captured and ringed but the female escaped.

The second A-frame box had no chicks, but a female already carrying a ring. DemOn advised that she had been ringed on 3rd July 2014. Details of the location are awaited.

Two boxes for Little Owl were checked but both boxes were crammed full of sticks and require cleaning out over the winter in preparation for next year. The adults were seen at the first box, possibly with young above the accumulation of three or four years of use or having moved into the tree where the box is sited.