May is my very favourite month. Everything seems to be in bloom and wherever you look there is an abundance of greenery and life. The air is thick with pollen, and insects send a haze up over the grass field that seems to grow taller by the day . My owls are also showing me there is an abundance too. They have been hunting well both morning and evening and as I watch I see they are successful reasonably quickly. I suspect it is a good vole year and when this happens broods of owls are also large.
I am always mindful of disturbance. Barn Owls are a Schedule 1 bird which means it is illegal to disturb their nest site. It would be ludicrous of me to stop feeding and they are used to me walking the fields each morning and evening but I make sure that I do nothing more. Its awfully tempting to walk down, sit in the grass and watch them hunting to and fro but even though they know me, I know this is distracting them from the important job of providing for their young. Instead I take my camera on my usual walk but always continue on my way and leave them in peace.
Feeding time however, is breathtaking. Owls circle against the sunset or perch on the sheds waiting. The Kestrel flies in first and more recently a Little Owl waits on the corner of the dutch barn for his share. As I throw the food onto the roof I hear a dull thud as owls snatch the food away just above my head.
Having lost adults in the past with tragic results though, I do like to check in on the owls from time to time. On two evenings this week I fed as usual and then watched from the farm gate to see that both pairs were present and also to see how many chicks they take in to the hungry broods. I watch the shed pair on the first evening where the owls dart through above the door gap.The female is bravest and flies straight over to the food upon the roof before hurrying back inside with it. I suspect she is our original female by the way she moves, by her confidence and by her mannerisms. I watched her twelve springs ago appearing from this very shed and I like to think I recognise her but there is something that has worried me which I will come to later. The male is far more tentative but between them they take seven chicks into the nest box before helping themselves to food which they take into the straw to eat.
The following evening I stood in a similar place and watched the box on the dutch barn. This is where the much darker female has her brood and despite it being her first year with us she is always first to circle round me and always straight in for food. She will chase off any intruders and even assert herself with the other three adults who sit placidly together waiting. She's smart too. One morning when I walked Max she was out hunting. When I reached the bottom of the grass field I watched her fly in and check out the feeding platform. She had realised it was me and despite it not being feeding time had made sure she wasn't missing out. At feeding time I watched her too flew from the shed roof over to her nest box but then she dropped down time and time again to take the food from the platform directly below her. I had to focus really hard but picked out two separate birds flying in with food and watched six chicks in total taken into the hungry brood.
I am satisfied that all is well but am puzzled over the origin of the new female who seems so very different from the others. I am also concerned who she has replaced. I re read blogs and look through last year's photos. Last Autumn we had an especially dark female fledge from east nest box. Looking at photos this could well be the female that has made up one of our adult pairs this year. Now, although I never captured any adults last year, I thought that it was our second pair who had used this box last summer. If it was, and something happened to the female, surely the male wouldn't take one of his own young as his new mate? Unless both adults from the second pair perished over winter and a brand new pair have joined us which I think with the extra feeding is highly unlikely.
Another possibility that I don't want to acknowledge is that we have actually lost our old female who would be thirteen this year and this youngster has paired up with her mate whom I refer to as our original pair. I am holding out hope that the ringed female that I watched hunting late last week is actually her but unless we find her dead somewhere and identify her by the ring, or we recapture the female from the shed to confirm otherwise I really can't say for sure. As you can imagine I am watching them avidly.
