Len Pick Trust Owl Project

Just before lunchtime yesterday, the second barn owl chick emerged from its egg.

The next one is due on Friday night.

This morning, about half past one, one of the eggs started to pip and soon after two o’clock a chick was visible.

All being well the next egg should hatch sometime on Wednesday.

Our barn owls have now settled on six eggs.

It will be quiet in the nest chamber for the next two weeks with little to see.

Barn owls incubate from the first egg so we can expect the first chick sometime early in the week beginning 23rd May.

Viewers may have noticed lots of primary feathers in the nest. These have been moulted by the female. She will grow some replacement feathers whilst she is incubating.

Yesterday afternoon at 1.41pm, the barn owls laid a sixth egg.

Six is not an unusual number as barn owls are prolific egg layers.

If there is to be a seventh it should be visible later on Friday evening.

Yesterday evening a fifth egg was laid by our barn owls.

If there is to be a sixth egg it should be visible sometime on Wednesday morning.

The fourth egg was laid at breakfast time today!

At 7.40am today the fourth egg was laid.

If there is to be a fifth egg, it should be visible sometime on Sunday.

The third egg has been laid.

Late on Tuesday night, at 11.23 pm, the female barn owl laid her third egg.

The fourth is due tomorrow morning.

The second egg has been laid.

The female barn owl laid her second egg just after 6pm yesterday evening.

We should see the third egg on Wednesday morning.

On Friday evening the female laid her first egg of the 2022 season.

Our new camera system doesn’t allow us to be precise about the timings of egg laying.

The second egg should be visible sometime on Monday morning.

The weather has been good and there seems to be plenty of prey available.

We are pleased (and also slightly relieved!) to see that both Barn Owls now appear to have taken up permanent residence in the tower having evicted the errant interloping pigeon(s). We now await the first egg. It could be soon or it could be another three or four weeks.

Unfortunately, the new camera is only feeding colour images intermittently, this is because of differing ambient lighting conditions which are failing to trigger the camera into colour mode. Sadly, We are unable to alter the feed until the end of the nesting season as this requires adjustment within the actual nest box itself which would, of course, disturb the owls and in turn fall foul of the Wildlife & Countryside Act. After a somewhat fraught time installing the new technology, we are obviously somewhat disappointed at this slight setback but hope you enjoy the pictures during the season.

On the webpage you will have noted the Flag counter. Did you know if you haver your mouse over the flags and right click on “open link in new window” you will see all the statistics relating to number of viewers and their different countries?