Peak District Retreat Blog

A second egg has been laid by our resident barn owl.

There are likely to be more laid over the next few days - watch this space.

The first barn owl egg has been laid.

A typical clutch is 4-7 eggs. Look out for the next arrival over the next day or two…

The barn owls won the tussle with stock doves and others to occupy the nest box. A pair moved in a week ago and seem settled in for the season.

You can monitor them on our live cams.

The one that looks a little paler over the head and back is the male (to the right on the attached photo), and the slightly darker one (to the left) is the female. It is difficult to distinguish them if you see them alone and don't have the other with which to compare. If you get a good view on the outside camera in daylight you may be able to distinguish a couple of dozen small black spots on the white feathers on the flanks of one of them (though they may be hidden by the folded wings). This is the female, the male not having any such spots (the second photo shows the female).

The expected behaviour is that the female will hardly leave the box at all, or even not at all, for the next two months, so you will almost always see at least one owl when you look at the in-box camera. The male is supposed to do all the hunting, bringing food to her, and to her and the young once they hatch. Once the young are about four weeks old and getting larger and needing more food the female starts hunting as well.

We have live streaming camera feeds from our barn owl nest box.

The owl activity varies by season.

Currently we have one barn owl roosting most daytimes from approximately 5-8 a.m. until 4-8 p.m. During her residence you will see her on the camera feed inside the nest box. You may catch her perching on the ledge outside the box when she arrives in the early morning and/or when she exists the box late afternoon/dusk.

If they use the box for breeding then it will be permanently occupied by the female for about three months during which time the male is in charge of hunting and providing.

The camera feeds are on our live owl cam page.

We're waiting to see whether or not we will have a breeding barn owl pair this year.

A barn owl (female we think) has roosted here most daytimes over the winter (though not as regularly as last winter).

We haven't seen her mate. We're waiting to see whether a mate appears, whether they do nest, and if so whether they nest here.

And alongside that, we wonder whether the box be taken over by tawny owls, or by stock doves. Check back later to see how it turns out…

Stock doves nested in our barn owl nest box (thereby excluding the owls) in 2022. Last year and again this year they are persistent in visiting the box hoping to find it empty.

We have a barn owl which roosts here most days (though occasionally misses a day). Today the doves came again, and entered the box to attack her.

The roosting barn owl promptly settled into defensive posture, back towards the corner of the box (for support?), standing on one leg leaving the other leg free to strike out with its long sharp claws.

In the full speed video it happens too quickly for you to see the leg strike, but keep watching and it is repeated in slow motion.

When the barn owls leave the box at dusk after a day of roosting, they often do some limbering up and stretching exercises on the nest box ledge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.