There was a tree near our factory where barn owls have nested for some years. Unfortunately three weeks ago it was cut down.
The barn owl is one of the most spectacular birds in the UK, especially when seen in the early morning or the evening, flying less than a metre above the ground along the edges of the woodlands near our factory.
We’ve been very fortunate for a number of years now to have barn owls nesting close by — often at dusk I would watch them silently like ghosts flying just above the ground.
They hunt by sound and therefore when you see a barn owl it’s always completely silent.”
It was a bad time to do this because now is the time when female should be sitting on her eggs.
Jonathan Preece, a very good friend of ours, heard about it and he offered to make a barn owl nesting box for us to put up in a tree.
The nesting box was erected recently and we have got our fingers and toes crossed that eventually the barn owls will take up residence.
It’s a little bit too early to be sure whether or not the barn owls will not nest there this year.
However we are hoping that next year the barn owls will find the box, which is only about 150 metres from the old tree where they previously had their nest.
If they do then again we’ll be able to see the barn owls hunting in the early morning and late evening in the field that runs along the back of our factory and around the margins of the nearby abandoned Georgian racecourse.
Barn owl. Photo: Peter Trimming.