A blog to share barn owl and other wildlife and general news about the Retreat and its environment.
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A female kestrel visits the barn owl nest box
16. March 2024, Wildlife
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.
Kestrel swoops on stock dove, twice in a few seconds
11. July 2022, Wildlife
In 2022 stock doves took over our barn owl nest box, displacing our barn owls who were visiting the box but had not taken up residence for breeding.
A kestrel noticed the doves coming and going. One one video (three days after this one) we filmed a kestrel taking up position ready to swoop on the dove, and the dove diving under the box instead of entering it.
This video shows a female kestrel swooping down, claws out, trying to grab the dove, but the dove took sharp evasive action. The kestrel looped around and made another swoop four seconds later.
Six days later we found a wing of a dove, on the ground about ten feet from the nest box, surrounded by lots of feathers. It seems that the kestrel was persistent and succeeded. There had been two dove eggs in the box, one of which had just hatched, but the hatchling had died by the time we discovered the situation.
READ MORE: Kestrel swoops on stock dove, twice in a few seconds
