This morning I decided to walk the dog in
the fields near the Hansons Nature Reserve – just over a mile from where I live - which are a good
area for seeing owls. We are fortunate
to have a small number of barn owls around this area, and like short eared owls
they hunt around ungrazed pasture – rough grassland where voles live. As explained here this allows a “litter” layer to develop which then becomes a home for voles,
their favoured prey.
The fields between the canal and the
reserve provide just such a habitat and have not been grazed for some
years. Nestboxes are also provided for the barn owls - on poles the other side of the lake from the nature reserve amongst the fishing lakes.
At times we have also had short
eared owls here in the winter, which are wonderful to see– although I have not
seen them in recent years. It seemed
worth having a look this morning to see whether they were around as the weather
was not good and sometimes rainy weather pushes the owls out to hunt by
day.
There is a similar but smaller area of
uncut pasture in the common quite near my house (see photo) and the preference
for hunting this part of the common is very clear when the kestrels are around
(or more occasionally the barn owl) as they are invariably hovering over this
area rather than other parts of the common.
I was shocked to hear that barn owl numbers
are estimated to now be around only 1,000 pairs in the UK after a very bad year
in 2013. According to a Guardian report http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/14/barn-owls-threatened-freak-weather
there may only be a thousand pairs in the UK, although the estimate on the RSPB
page is four times that many. In any
case this is very low, so here’s hoping that the milder winter this year (so
far) will help.
In the event, today, there were no owls to
be seen and very few birds altogether: a flock of lapwings flew overhead; a few
crows, magpies, ducks and herons – which were roosting in the heronry – and
given the ferocity of the wind and intensity of the rain, I couldn’t blame
them.
