Barn owl spotted roosting at Abberton Reservoir

Barn owls have always been seen at Abberton Reservoir and this time of year we often see the barn owl at the end of the day hunting in the rough grassland around the site or first thing in the morning sitting on an advantage point, often our flag pole posts, listening intently for prey.

With a heart-shaped face, buff back and wings and pure white underparts, the barn owl is a distinctive and much-loved bird and a favourite at Abberton.

We have been seeing several signs that owls are roosting on site including white wash (droppings) and pellets so we thought we would do a bit of investigation work and set some of our spy cams to make sure that this was a barn owl and not a tawny owl roosting.

On our first attempt we struck it lucky and were treated to some rather washed out images of an owl, but you could still see that this was indeed a barn owl.

Feeling rather elated, our volunteer John covered some of the lights up on the camera to see if this would help reduce the glow and reinstated the camera.

Our luck didn’t continue and that night nothing was seen, but not deterred John has been persisting putting the cameras out every evening and has on several occasions captured great video footage of the barn owl, but also of stock doves taking shelter.

Reducing the amount of infra-red lights has also worked and the video footage is much clearer and the white barn owl not so ghostly white.

We are hoping that if we continue to video the owl that maybe we will capture it regurgitating one of its pellets that we keep finding on site, but as yet this behaviour hasn’t been seen on our camera.

All owls produce pellets which are made up of undigested food including fur and bones and dissecting these can be a very interesting way of finding out what small mammals are on site; this may sound disgusting to some of you, but pellets are not droppings and once they have dried out they do not smell.

As many as six small mammal skeletons can be found in each pellet and these can include voles, mice and shrews, but sometimes small birds and frogs have been recorded in pellets too.

On the reserve we did have two barn owl boxes up on site and in 2009 five chicks were reared although the smallest one we weren’t convinced would survive due to its size.

Since then kestrels and stock doves have used the boxes and raised young, but it was only last year that barn owls returned and were found sitting on eggs in the box.

Neither adult had rings on, so they were ringed by a licenced ringer and on his return a few weeks later to see if any chicks had hatched the box was empty.

These barn owls were later found in another box around the reservoir with young, so it wasn’t too disappointing that they had left our box.

After one of our large trees fell over last year, which contained one of our boxes we are now looking at other sites to put a new box up to try and encourage the barn owls to nest again and not just to use the reserve for roosting and hunting.

If you are really interested in owl (and who isn’t?) we are holding our first ‘Hootingly Good Show’ – owl talk and flight evening on Thursday, February 22.

Gary and Faith from the Imperial Bird of Prey Academy will be with us with a selection of owls that evening and will be giving a talk with interesting facts about owls; they will be flying them in the centre so a great opportunity to see them up close.

If you would like to join us on that evening, please call the centre on 01206 738172 as spaces are limited and advanced booking is essential.

If you have spare time and would like to help barn owls in Essex or you are a landowner who would like to put a barn owl box up on your land please contact Emma Ormond, Living Landscapes Co-ordinator on 01621 862954 and she would happily give you advice or train you up as a volunteer for the Essex Barn Owl Conservation Project.

For more information on any of our events and wildlife sightings, please look at the Abberton pages on Essex Wildlife Trust’s website www.essexwt.org.uk.

For up to date information, including video of our barn owl, follow us on facebook at www.facebook.com/EWTAbberton or on Twitter @EWTAbberton. Jo Wray, Site Manager