A barn owl at mid-day

 We watched this lovely barn owl, hunting at mid-day, a couple of weeks ago. The location was the naturally re-wilding site of a former coal mine in the Wear valley near the village of Willington. It 's about sixty years since the mine closed and it has reverted to open grassland with scattered alder, willow and  hawthorn, with well-established young oaks that must have been sown by jays burying acorns from old woodland nearby. It's a fine location for grassland butterflies in summer and in winter there's a very high vole population, so it's a perfect hunting ground for barn owls.