Bumper Beginning to Barn Owl Season

The Barn Owl season has kicked off to an incredible start, with early breeding birds found in many boxes and brood sizes large. There has even been evidence of a little cached food, suggesting that prey is sufficient, if not abundant. 

Of the boxes I check, average brood size is currently standing at 4.5 and it'll be interesting to see if that changes. Several 5s and 6s and even two broods of 7 have now been ringed by the group and that was all by the end of May!

Pete

A brood of 7 Barn Owls in the Vale of Belvoir.

 

 

Mist-netting in May

We started the CES at Attenborough on 4 May. A reasonable visit with 46 birds caught, the usual range of species but 2 Cetti's and 2 Reed Buntings were nice, particularly as one of the Reed Buntings was a retrap from 2022. We also had a few returning warblers from the last couple of years. Visit 2 was carried out on 10 May. What a difference! Only 16 birds caught. One interesting bird was a retrap Garden Warbler from 2023 in the adjoining net to where it was originally caught but we did not catch it in 2024 or 2025. Visit 3 was carried out on 24 May and was thankfully a small improvement on visit 2 with 26 birds, including 8 Reed Warblers, one of which was a returning bird from 2024 and 2025. The low numbers continued for Visit 4 last Sunday: just 22 birds. We had a Dunnock and Great Tit from 2022 but the bird of the day was a Whitethroat, the first on the CES since 2011.

Between CES visits 2 and 3 we had a session at Holme Pierrepont. The site was very quiet and a couple of the usual nets failed to catch anything. We finished with just 22 birds, but 5 of them were Garden Warblers.

Kev

Reed Warbler, Holme Pierrepont, May 2026 (KJH)