Let's be honest, I was duty-bound to do some pleasurable barn owl homework, and this little beauty, Barn Owl one of the 'Encounters in the Wild' series by Jim Crumley, published by Saraband Books, was a very happy find and a very enjoyable read.
Some time ago I wrote about The Company of Swans by the same author, a book that deservedly sits on my Best Books About Nature shelf and Barn Owl will join it.
Just to update...
Having seen two owls in the pole box we have only been seeing one for a few weeks now. By all accounts this is a 'Good Sign' suggesting that Mr is doing the foraging whilst Mrs sits on a clutch of eggs. Out he pops at about 9pm, and sits and ponders for a while. I walked up the field behind the house and the box just to get an idea of his view ...
Not bad...
Then he takes to the wing. We walk out along the lane and he flies over and around us, and back and forth to the nest box. As the light fades everything everyone writes about barn owls happens. Jim Crumley calls them 'ambassadors for life on the edge...the silent flier...'
They look so small and compact perched on their veranda...
and then she pops back in and he lifts off, and we see these huge wings.
Everything else that flies around us here has an audible flutter or beat to its wings, but not the barn owl, completely silent as it glides. And yes, he does turn his head around 180 degrees.
Watching barn owls on the Isle of Skye, Jim Crumley doesn't quite enjoy the luxury of the warmth of the bathroom vantage point that we do, which makes me realise that it might be quite unusual to sit and watch barn owls in such comfort (the Kayaker did a shift with his camera over Easter). But likewise, on a moonlit night, Jim is transfixed by his 'rarefied barn owl watching' as the owl ...
'flew around two sides of the cottage ...and burst with devastating slowness and silence into that tingling airspace...'
Wondering where ours was one evening last week I nipped across from the bathroom to look from a bedroom window at the front of the house. Acres of beautiful barn-owl friendly fields and I was hoping for a glimpse of him flying.
Nothing...
I opened the bedroom window to lean out a bit and he took off from the roof above my head. I didn't quite fall out with the excitement of the moment, but he'd obviously been perched there and me oblivious.
Jim Crumley recounts many-an astonishing encounter with Tyto alba, summoning up the most vivid impressions of a bird once met never forgotten. Bookhound and I have become complete Barn Owl Bores, except people around us here seem to be pleased and interested and more boxes will be going up I'm sure. We all thought they had long deserted this patch of the Tamar Valley so to see them back is heartening, but the book explains the cycle, the field vole 'crash' and 'plague' population phenomenon and the barn owls dependence on this food source. In a vole 'plague' year the owls will start breeding early and lay big clutches (oh please), maybe even try for several broods, whilst in the 'crash' years they decide not to breed. It will be too much like hard work finding food and they know it. The figures are startling, the barn owl's intelligence and resilience incredible.
So far we have only found one pellet. Barn owls cough up the undigestible left-overs from a meal in pellet form and make their nest from them, Jim calls it 'architectural recycling'. We suspect Mrs Barn Owl might be sitting on a veritable mattress of them up in that there pole box. And yes of course we dissected it...
I was intrigued by Jim Crumley's suggestion that badgers and barn owls are 'kindred spirits of the half-light and the half-dark, we'd call it the dimpsey, but of course they are. Nor did I know that badgers 'insist on the proximity of water' which explains the location of the setts around us here. We often see one lumbering along the lane at night, but Jim's account of the badger cub and the barn owl wins the day...maybe the barn owl is an unearthly sight even for a badger, they know to keep their distance.
But the modern world is fraught with dangers and hazards and Jim Crumley's elaboration of those had me wincing. HS2 the new high speed rail link from London to Birmingham...
'predicts the loss of the entire barn owl breeding population within 1.5km of the entire length of the route'.
The population is further decimated by rat poison, all of which makes doing our best by our pair even more important. In any case we've limited our own use of poisons and pesticide for a while now, and there will be no slug pellets this year either (I'm currently experimenting with coffee grounds), but we can't control what happens beyond our boundaries. Having spoken to the Barn Owl Trust to ask how we could help create optimum barn owl habitat, we then contacted the land agent (who agreed it was a good idea) and the farmer who rents the grassland around us (who hasn't replied) to ask if he would consider leaving a margin around the field behind the pole box when he cuts the grass. If we are here on the day they do it I'll go out and lie down in front of it or something.
Jim Crumley highlights the good conservation work being done by many of the organisations, and how grateful we are to the Barn Owl Trust for their endeavours with the Westmoor project here nine years ago. They are hoping to come and open the inspection hatch and look inside the box in June...if there are owlets apparently they are 'pretty bomb proof' by then. Fingers crossed, and meanwhile for the nearest next best thing to actually watching them, Jim Crumley's book is a winner...oh yes and then there's this (with thanks to Tommy Hatwell)
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