With great help from Emma, Gary, Ian and Pete, I've virtually finished checking the south-east Notts Tawny Owl nest boxes and I've also had a look to see how some of the Barn Owls are doing. Tawnies have used 12 of the 40 or so boxes checked. A tad disappointing, but all look to be doing well and broods of four (1) and three (3) ringed so far. Also, good to retrap adult females that were first ringed as breeders in their boxes in 2006, 2007 and 2011. Five broods of Tawnies still to ring, so not looking too bad at the moment.
Barn Owls have been reported as going down to lay much earlier this year, and we checked several sites on the way round the Tawnies. Where breeding, they have complete clutches of 5-7 eggs, and two sites (one a box and one in an ash tree) c500m apart are just hatching. Near Southwell we retrapped a male Barn Owl that had been ringed as a chick by Newark in 2007 and not seen again til now.
All monitoring of Barn Owls is done under a BTO issued Schedule 1 licence to disturb.
Jim
(All pics by G. Goddard)
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