Harvest.

 August is my quiet month. It tests my loyalty to the owls such is their absence and it would be easy to cease the feeding, the evening walk, the watching and the wondering. Yet I know the females are likely to be sitting and after such a poor start to the year I remain hopeful for some autumn broods for our resident birds.

As August continues I have begun to see more of the adult birds. They wait once more in the ash tree, they fly jauntily across the yard and I see them alight upon the shed when they think I have left.Sometimes I catch one flying in to the combine shed with food but not enough to convince me that we have owlets, not yet. Upon walking over to the beehives just before sunset one evening we also saw an owl leave the beehive box. There are copious amounts of splashings directly below its entrance which tells me that this box is regularly used, but by who?

What is more noticeable is the shrieking and vocalisations that continue long after I have delivered the food. Some of the owls are far from happy and I cannot work out if it is the adult birds getting cross with each other or whether the parents are still having trouble sending the first brood babies away. If it was up to me they could all stay on site and live as one big happy family but I know that isn't how it works. What the increased agitation does tell me is that owlets may be imminent and with the increased sightings I had become optimistic for some good news.

However harvest is now thankfully underway. The combines have come lumbering out to transform the fields. The owls have gone to roost having hunted the tall golden crops and awoken to shorn acres of farmland. These conditions make for rich pickings and so, for the last ten days, my owls have been quiet once again. It is reassuring that when they can hunt with ease that they ignore the food I bring and I have cut back drastically. Even the adult kestrel who had resumed his usual spot in the westernmost eaves fails to show and the little owls that glared at me and were even more reliable than the barn owls are nowhere to be seen. 

Yet just as I get used to an absence of owls once more the rain began midweek, halting the farmer's relentless hoarding and made for impossible hunting conditions. I fed as usual and just as I was leaving I caught sight of an owl flying towards the shed. I stood motionless, hidden by the hedge in the shadow of the straw.From here I could watch without risk of disturbance. I hadn't seen an owl flying this keenly since last winter and sure enough, it headed straight into the shed. I waited patiently. One, two, three, four times it flew out for food and returned to the shed. The fifth time it disappeared I darted silently out of the yard in a bid not to alert it to my presence. I am delighted to report that it seems August may be not so quiet after all.

Anticipation

 August is an odd month. On the farm it is the culmination of the year's hard work and the harvest is looked towards with more than a little trepidation. Farmers watch each other's movements anxiously all of them willing the crop to ripen in readiness for the fine weather. Until everything aligns they can but wait but the anticipation can be sensed across the golden swathes of countryside.

It is my quietest month with the owls but I know that they are also anticipating busier times ahead in the form of second broods. It is now mid August and I am already being greeted a little more keenly by the male bird that waits high in the ash tree. We have an unspoken agreement, I leave the food here first and whilst I take food over to the dutch barn and the shed where his mate is sitting he helps himself from my first offerings. By the time he has finished I am leaving the farm. As my torch pans over to the farm gate I watch him fold himself neatly as he enters the narrow space into the shed. He now has food for his mate and if I am correct, for their newly hatched owlets. His keenness and new found bravery tell me that he is feeding more than just his female. 

The trail cam showed him extremely attentive around this chosen nest site a couple of weeks back and this was where I found the moult feathers indicating that she was sitting on eggs. What a ingenious plan to moult whilst confined to the nest box; what an admirable piece of multitasking. He has, however, outwitted me as to his roost site. On the odd occasion that I have entered the shed I haven't seen him leave yet he is nowhere to be seen. What the photos have shown me is that he may have a coloured ring in which case he is our male from last year that managed two wives at once. I am happy to think that this bird is still on site and apparently thriving.

The whereabouts of the second pair is still a mystery. I have seen little activity around the chimney but there is an area in the roof of the grain dryer with a broken vent and the opening is peppered with splashy droppings. It would make for a fine owl roost with little disturbance and I intend to do a little surreptitious detective work around that area. After such a poor start to the year two autumn broods would be a delight. The youngsters from June are still visiting. I sometimes hear their insistent hissing as they return in the hope of a free meal yet their visits will soon end. With an imminent second brood the parents will send them away and the screeching we hear after feeding time across the golden crops seem to indicate that this ousting may happen sooner rather than later. Midweek I watched a female hunting before dusk, quartering the ditches and alighting on a branch overlooking the farm's easternmost border. This had to be one of the youngsters and I watched with rapt attention at her focus, her poise and her deadly precision. I hope that her forced eviction into the wider world coincides with the harvest when the voles run scared and she is able to benefit from this bounty. 

As if to make way for the second broods the kestrels have also left the safety of the farm. Their noisy clamouring each morning has lessened until now I only hear the faintest of chattering as I arrive with food. Each evening I shine the torch up onto the air vent of the wheat store. Once there were four stout little bodies huddled together, then three. By last weekend only one remained, probably the last to fledge the nest and as such the last to spread its wings. Last night there were none and I felt sad and proud and relieved that they had made it, all at once. Tonight I walked a different route covering six fields along the riverbank and I was accompanied by a kestrel the whole way home. It was a little reward for my work and such acknowledgement makes my anticipation of new broods ever sweeter.