Wednesday 27 November 2019

Barn Owl bits & bobs. North Cornwall, November 2019



Well I made 2 of these barn owl nesting boxes yesterday and successfully installed both in 2 barns in North Cornwall today (with a bit of help!).

Surprised to open the door of the barn this morning to see an owl flying around and then disappearing into thin air!
I saw it go up to a dark corner where we can't find any holes to the outside but couldn't find it again.
I'd been convinced it had been using a broken window for access but it was at the opposite end of the barn.
I did however capture a short bit of camera trap footage that showed an owl leaving via the broken window. The bird looks quite dark but I think that's because it's filmed from above in semi-dark conditions.
Keep watching because it's a fleeting fly-by near the end of the short snip.









I collected several pellets from this barn a few weeks ago and most of them contained skulls & bones of small mammals, notably field vole & bank vole.

Here are a few photos from that analysis although I've not seperated them to species properly yet.






Lower jawbones from small mammals


Another species that featured on the camera trap footage were bats. Not sure of the type of bats but one can be clearly seen on the left of the wall in the following video snip.
It is at the very beginning of the clip so you may need to drag it back when in full screen if it auto-starts.