Peak District Retreat Blog
A blog to share some items of interest about the Retreat and its environment - wildlife or other nature notes and images, or maybe something else. Our barn owl nest box has three cameras so barn owls will certainly feature in our blog, but so will other birds and other wildlife.
We do not commit to regular updates, rather we intend to post items of particular interest when they arise. We do have quite a back catalogue of past images which we may post to ‘back-fill’ the blog, while generally keeping the entries in chronological order.
Barn owls try to recover their nestbox from stock doves
In 2022 our barn owl nest box was taken over by nesting stock doves. One night the owls tried to reclaim the box.
In 2022 our barn owl nest box was taken over by a pair of stock doves when the owls didn't visit the box for a few days. One smallish barn owl had been roosting there during daytimes pretty regularly, and wanted to continue doing so. By now the stock doves had two eggs.
One dove was sitting on the eggs when suddenly a large barn owl crashed into the box, seemingly summoned by the smaller owl, and smothered the dove briefly. Yet the barn owl did not seem to aim to harm the dove, and then flew away.
The doves did not succeed in raising their young - see video 'kestrel swoops on stock dove'. Neither did the owls breed here that year though they did in 2023.
