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. 

Barn owls

It used to be the case that you could go for years in my part of Durham without seeing nesting barn owls. This week I've had the pleasure of watching two pairs.

The first was a bird hunting over open rough grassland, with scattered hawthorns, beside an old railway line that is now a public bridleway.

Barn owls almost seem to float across the ground, then suddenly perform a wing-over and stoop on their prey. This one struck three times before it rose with something small and furry in its talons, flew high over the trees and headed towards some old farm buildings where it must be nesting.

The sighting of the second pair was very close to home, nesting in a hollow ash tree on a farm belonging to a friend. She has farmed there for over forty years but this was the first barn owl that had ever graced them with a nest, so she was absolutely delighted. 

I spent yesterday evening watching a parent bird flying to and from the nest, hunting over the pastures amongst the cattle at sunset. Sometimes it flew right through the orchard where I was standing, no more than twenty metres away.

A magical evening, watching a truly stunning bird.

Silent Flight

Just returned from a few days birdwatching on the Norfolk coast at Wells-next-the-Sea, where one of the highlights was the barn owls. We spotted this wary individual along the Peddlar's Way coastal path...

.... and watched it hunting low over the edge of the saltmarsh with that floating, ethereal silent flight, coming ever-closer until...

...it spotted us. We thought that might be the last we'd see of it..

... as it banked away, revealing....

... this classic flat-faced profile...

... but then it spotted a movement in the grass, stalled....

.... hovered for a few seconds...

... and then dropped onto something small and furry in the grass....

... and then it was away, off towards...

... the church tower in Wells, where I guess it's a reasonable bet that it might be nesting.