Barn Owl – Out of the blue

“Excuse me, are you looking at birds?“

This is a familiar and well-used introduction, usually from a non-birder to a birder. It is slightly preferable to “What are you looking at?” Often folk are just curious as to why someone might be standing in a meadow, binoculars around their neck, looking up at the sky with a microphone next to them. It’s a fair question. However, explaining the intricacies of recording visible migration is often beyond the limits of my patience, so I usually just say “yes“.

On this occasion, the person making inquiries wanted some help identifying a bird that they had seen. My heart sank a little. This might not be a quick interaction and more importantly, our conversation might drown out the flight calls of Hawfinches passing overhead. Then suddenly I became much more interested:

“It was a large white bird, bigger than a Kestrel, floating low over the meadow in the very last of the light, occasionally dropping down, then rising up again“

It was a perfect description of a Barn Owl hunting. Barn Owls are very rare up here. Isaac West and I sounded recorded one calling when we were out listening for Common Scoters in the spring of 2021. We never saw that bird and it has remained the sole Lye Valley area record over the last six years. I was intrigued by the dog-walker’s report, even though the bird was only seen once, and that was several days ago.

On Thursday evening, I visited Warneford Meadow as the light was fading. By 5pm it was dark and I was just about to return, when a ghostly pale shape floated across the meadow in front of me: Barn Owl! I took some video of the owl hunting, the lights of the Churchill Hospital bright in the background:

I watched the Barn Owl hunting for about 20 very special minutes, amazed that it had found this small area of meadow in urban Oxford, completely surrounded by housing and hospitals.

This was my 700th visit to the Lye Valley area, and Barn Owl is the 81st species that I have recorded here this year. The illustrated list of all 112 species recorded in the Lye Valley area is here.

I spent Friday in north Norfolk with Richard Campey, who lives and works near the coast. It was a relaxed day, with some morning sunshine, before showers moved in from the south-west during the afternoon. We didn’t travel out of north-west Norfolk and saw nearly 70 species without really trying.

Barn Owls were very obvious, perhaps after rain preventing them from hunting last night. We saw at least 6 during the day, including this early morning bird, perched on the way to Holkham Bay, our first stop after Richard had dropped off his son at work.

An area of the marsh at Holkham has been fenced off to allow regeneration of the saltmarsh. This area has been attracting Shorelark this winter. When we arrived 4 birds were right in the middle of fenced off area, but as we watched and waited they worked their way over towards us. Eventually, we had superb views in lovely early morning sunlight:

There were also at least 40 Snow Bunting on the saltmarsh, with over 1000 Common Scoter, 5 Red-breasted Merganser, 4 Long-tailed Duck and 2 Great Crested Grebes on the sea.

As always, the skies and fields of north Norfolk were filled with thousands of Pink-footed Geese, some quite close :

The Rough-legged Buzzard at Wells announced itself by putting up hundreds of Lapwing, Golden Plover and thousands of duck. We had superb ‘scope views of it hunting in front of the pines and frequently hovering before it returned to its regular perch on a building viewable from the road:

The sunshine after yesterday’s rain had brought out the raptors with lots of Kestrels, Marsh Harriers, Common Buzzards and a Sparrowhawk all seen throughout the day.

A wintering Black-necked Grebe on Holkham Hall lake was a nice addition to the day list:

The afternoon saw a change in the weather, with regular heavy rain showers. As darkness fell we popped in to see if the Eastern Yellow Wagtail was about still about, as it’s favourite dung piles are only 10 minutes from Richard’s house. We discovered that it hadn’t been seen in over two hours, so called it a day and went back to Richard’s for afternoon tea. Hard-core birding it wasn’t, but it was a superb chilled-out day with a good friend. We finished the day as we had begun it, with a Barn Owl. We watched this bird hunting by the road near Sedgeford. On one occasion it hovered right above our car, starring down at us, providing the sort of view that is the last thing that countless mice and voles ever see. They are fabulous birds:

Tag: Barn Owl

Warneford Meadow Barn Owl

A chilled-out day in Norfolk