Wildlife and general news blog about the Retreat and its environment

The fourth barn owl egg has hatched.

Near the top of the photo there is a half-shell from the recent hatching. There are two eggs remaining to hatch over the next few days.

There is enough light this morning to see colour inside the box, so you can see the pink blobbiness of the owlets - the white fluff will come later. It is hard to distinguish the four separately but there are four there.

This morning we have a third hatchling.

Hatching seemed to occur around 7am; at 7:25 am the female barn owl was removing pieces of shell from underneath her, and then eating them.

The male owl seems to be doing a good job of hunting every night, leaving the female barn owl with sufficient prey to sustain her and the owlets throughout the day.

A second barn owlet has hatched around midday today.

Again the image is not very clear, but you can see there are now only four eggs, and to the right of the eggs there are two owlets, the newer one nearer the top of the image.

Lower down the photo there are some fragments of egg shell which the owl moved from underneath her about 50 minutes before this photo. She usually eats the shell fragments some time later.

The female barn owl left the box for about 90 seconds, giving us a chance to zoom in and see the small movements of the day old barn owlet at top-right.

View the video on Youtube

It isn't very clear, but we appear to have our first barn owl hatchling of the season (the fuzzy pink blob in the photos).

Installed today, we now have a tawny owl nestbox hanging on a rowan tree.

As recommended it is facing east to avoid the prevailing SW wind and rain. The location is 80m north of the barn owl nestbox, which is on the rear-left of the house seen peeking over the horizon to the right of the rowan tree.

The design and dimensions of the are based on guides from the Barn Owl Trust and BTO.

This is installed too late for the current nesting season, but it will be available for the tawnies to notice it in the Autumn, when they are scouting potential nesting sites ready for early next year.

This year our barn owl pair have six eggs, laid approximately every two days between 30th March and 12th April.

Laying to hatching interval is around 29-32 days, so the first hatchling is likely to appear within the next few days. Keep an eye on the owlcam to see if you can be first to spot it.

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This barn owl seems to have been making a close inspection of the camera attached to the owlbox ledge.

Our cameras have ‘no-glow’/'low-glow' 940nm infrared lighting at night. In dim nightime conditions there is a slight red glow visible but it doesn't seem to deter the owls.