Len Pick Trust Owl Project

Last night, just before 11pm, the fourth egg was laid.

Will there be a fifth this year?

If so it is due on Thursday morning.

At 0926 today our female laid her third egg.

If there is to be a fourth it should arrive sometime on Monday night.

It would now seem the first egg was laid last Monday morning.

The camera has been off line for several days and when it returned we could see the owls have been busy laying two eggs.

It is impossible to know when they were laid but they were seen at 11pm last night.

Hopefully we will have a third egg which will give a rough indication of the laying times of the first two.

The camera at The Len Pick Trust tower has seen many successful breeding seasons in the past and this year our pair are already together and have been seen mating.

It will be a few weeks before we have the first egg as barn owls don’t usually lay in the UK until late April or even early May.

Much depends on the availability of prey. The female needs to get into egg laying condition over the next month or so, and this means eating at least four small rodents each night. Many of these will be brought to her by the male to show her how good a provider he is.

It is possible the vole population might be quite low at the moment as so much of their grassland habitat has been under water recently.

We must wait and see. Fingers crossed.

A very warm welcome to our Owl Tower blog, which returns for the 2024 nesting season.

By this time of year, our our live camera feed would usually be visible on this page, giving a unique insight into our South Lincolnshire owl tower. Sadly, during a storm in 2023, the camera equipment was damaged meaning the feed is not currently available. We’re working hard to install new equipment and get the video feed online once again, and hope to have this issue resolved within the next couple of weeks.

We are afraid that following the thunder storms experienced over Bourne on Sunday afternoon, some of the owl camera equipment appears to have been damaged by a lighting strike(s) and consequently the camera feed is down.  We are investigating the problem and hope (Fingers crossed!) that matters are capable of of a relatively easy fix. In view of the fact that, prior to this episode, the surviving chick was latterly only infrequently seen in the box, we were contemplating turning the feed off for the season but the decision has now been made for us!

It has regrettably been a very mixed season this year and indeed we are advised that only some 97 Owl chicks have been ringed throughout the whole of the county  of Lincolnshire, so in some ways we have been lucky to produce one chick.

We are pleased to report as you will see, the camera feed has been restored thanks to our technical back-up guys – Well done!!!

Unfortunately, a problem has manifested itself with the Owl Cam feed. We are working on a fix and we hope to resolve the problem as soon as possible.

The surviving chick is seven weeks old today.

Soon it will disappear into the entrance tunnel for long periods but will return to the box at feeding time.

Things have improved a lot this week as the harvest is finally underway and mice are abundant.

In fact there has been surplus prey this past few days so the adult female has been able to take things a bit easier after a difficult time in July.

Young rats are common amongst the prey items. The lack of voles this year has meant the adult owls have had to look for other rodent species.

Surprisingly, the adult male has turned up again! He hasn’t been seen for a few weeks but now he pops into the box most nights, sometimes with prey, but mostly to bond with the female.