Peak District Retreat Blog

The curlews are returning to their breeding grounds around us.

We've heard and seen the first curlews of the year. Each year the curlews return to the moorlands around us to nest on the wet moorland ground which is ideal feeding grounds for them and their chicks.

Staffordshire Wildlife Trust (SWT) manage most of the land surrounding us as a wildlife corridor between the Roaches nature reserve and Black Brook nature reserve. Curlews are a species in decline so SWT pays special attention to managing their land so as to best accommodate the curlews. Curlews like to nest in tall grass for protection, but adjacent to open land so that they can see what is coming. SWT ‘tops’ (threshes) patches of the tall rushes to make patches of open land adjacent to patches of undisturbed rushes. For the last few years, at our invitation, they have managed our land in the same way.

So far I don't have any photos of this year's curlews, so I've attached some photos of a curlew courting display that I observed in 2019, and some other past photos too.

Our resident barn owl returns to the nest box early one morning, bringing some prey with her.

A snap of our barn owl ("ours" in that she is using our box frequently as a day time roost) with the sun behind her as she lands, and with a vole held in her right foot.

Our first recording of a tawny owl.

We often hear tawny owls hooting, particularly over the last 18 months, but this is the first time we have caught one on camera at our barn owl nest box.

Our barn owl box is designed to suit barn owls, but other birds also show interest in it.

It snowed last night and the barn owl nest box was covered deep snow.

Fortunately no owls were trapped inside as the box was not inhabited last night.

A wren visited and perched on the mound of snow.

During 2024 there was no owl breeding in our barn owl nest box.

During the winter 2023/24 one owl (female we think) roosted in the box every single daytime for over 6 months, leaving at dusk to go hunting and returning around dawn. During that time we didn't see a second owl.

We might have expected to see them together as a pair from around Jan/Feb but still we saw a second owl on only a couple of occasions, and the female was roosting here less regularly, not being seen at all from May onwards for two to three months.

Perhaps the pair nested somewhere else this year. We saw more of them July/August, with some courting behaviour (see photos) but no nesting or breeding.

A female sparrowhawk visits the barn owl nest box.

We consider it a barn owl nest box, but other species are interested in it too.

This photo has a ghostly appearance but with an innocent explanation.

The see-through appearance is due to the camera's handling of motion not coping well-enough with this large fast-moving object. The camera ‘remembers’ the scenery behind the owl and repeats that instead of showing all of the owl that is actually there. 

A female kestrel visits the barn owl nest box and peeks in.

While a barn owl is roosting in the box, a female kestrel explores, including peeking into the box.

Barn owls and kestrels can be serious adversaries. Kestrels may attack barn owls on the wing in an attempt to steal their prey, and sometimes that is successful. Sometimes they fight, including to the death of one of them, over rights to a nesting space.

We can see the local red deer any time of year, but most frequently in the spring.

Sometimes we see them naked-eye in in the daytime, sometimes close and sometimes far away. We also catch them on wildlife/security cameras at night.

Here are a few such photos from different dates. Also a daytime video from a solar-powered camera mounted on a tree adjacent to a gully, and a night-time video of a herd of deer within 20 yards of our house.

2023 has been a successful year for our barn owls.

The pair settled into the box earlier in the year. Four eggs were laid, four eggs all hatched, and four owlets all grew and fledged. They are pictured here just after the youngest of them finally grew strong enough to fly up from the bottom of the deep nest box to get out of the entrance hole.

This success is despite the male seemingly not being a very diligent provider and rarely bringing prey for the young, with the burden of the feeding falling on the female.

We often see the brown hares exploring a 12 inch land drain which passes under our track.

Sometimes they exit the other end, circle around overground, and go through the pipe again, seemingly just playing! Sometimes, as on the attached video, they exit the far end, turn around, and come back to where they entered. And sometimes they back out, seemingly unable to turn around inside the pipe.

Their interest in the pipe is not too surprising as it is sometimes used as a den by other wildlife such as stoat, weasel, and mice.

An unexpected sighting.

An unusual bird to see in the UK, and particularly unusual to see it on moorland in December/January when they are usually found (if at all) on the coast.

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.