What better way to return to The River Field blog than with news of our latest arrival…
Here is an owl pellet taken from the base of the box Paddy put up two years ago. Last night, Caroline, Ivan and their two little Wildlife Detectives Isabel (4) and Juliette (2) saw the owl flying out of its nest as they were returning from their Valentine's Day marshmallow-roasting session at the bonfire. They called me to share the news and so this morning I went down for a closer look - which is when I found this very fresh pellet...
Now the big question is "What type of owl is it?"
We're really hoping for a Barn Owl because there are SO few of them left in Ireland (nobody knows exactly how many, we haven't counted, but a rough guess is about 400 to 500 breeding pairs). The box was intended for a Barn Owl (we got the plans from the Barn Owl Trust in the UK) and as far as we know they're the only ones that like to live in boxes, but we haven't seen it yet, so we can't be 100% sure.
Any kind of owl would do, though. We're not that fussy.
According to Birdwatch Ireland, Snowy Owls only visit bogs in the north-west during winter when they get hungry in the Arctic, so it's not likely to be one of those. Short Eared Owls sometimes visit mountain uplands and coastal lowlands in the south and east during the winter and, on the rare occasions that they do breed, they do it in the mountains so the chances are it isn't one of them either.
It's more likely to be a Long Eared Owl or a Barn Owl.
Long Eared Owls (let's call them LEOs for short) are common all across Ireland and, unlike BOs (see what I did there?), nobody's particularly worried about them. The big reason for this seems to be that there are plenty of places for them to live. LEOs like to roost in dense stands of trees, especially conifer forests - and Ireland has a good few of those. Barn Owls on the other hand are facing extinction in Ireland, which is why they're 'Red List'-ed.
We know what has pushed them to the brink - homelessness, starvation and poisoning, basically - but we don't know which has had the biggest impact (though it hardly seems to matter). There isn't much information, nor is there much money to be spent collecting said information. The main ways scientists (and therefore policy-makers) find out about birds like the Barn Owl are through volunteers calling Birdwatch Ireland or the National Biodiversity Data Centre with sightings, taking part in the Bird Atlas survey or sending records to BirdTrack. And how many people do you know who do that? Yes, exactly.
A Barn Owl's favourite place to live is in the hollow of an old Elm tree. Which is problematic because, thanks to Dutch Elm disease, there aren't many Elms left (let alone old ones that might have holes in). A second preference would be the hollow of any old tree, but since Ireland's forest cover is mostly very new (less than 100 years old), there aren't many hollow old trees around - of any species. Their third favourite place to live is old ruins and barns (hence their name). Ireland used to have lots of these, but we knocked a lot of them down during the Celtic Tiger to build new ones, or they were neglected and fell down on their own. All of which leaves the Barn Owl out in the cold…
…which mightn't be so awful, if it wasn't hungry and poisoned too. The loss of small scale tillage, the change from hay to silage and the removal of hedgerows across rural Ireland have meant that there are fewer and fewer places to look for food, and less food to eat in those places. All the while the food that is available is frequently riddled with toxic poisons laid down by the likes of you and I to keep mice and rats away from our houses. These 'bio-accumulate' in predators like owls, slowly killing them (much like neonicotinoids and various other pesticides are doing to bees, but that's a whole other blog post). A research project based between UCC and Birdwatch Ireland is seeking owl carcasses in order to test their livers for toxins and try to figure out how they died, so hopefully we'll have some data in the near future.
In the meantime, I'll be listening out for a hoot (LEO) or a screech (BO) this evening… Will post news of species identification as soon as possible!
Here is an owl pellet taken from the base of the box Paddy put up two years ago. Last night, Caroline, Ivan and their two little Wildlife Detectives Isabel (4) and Juliette (2) saw the owl flying out of its nest as they were returning from their Valentine's Day marshmallow-roasting session at the bonfire. They called me to share the news and so this morning I went down for a closer look - which is when I found this very fresh pellet...
Now the big question is "What type of owl is it?"
We're really hoping for a Barn Owl because there are SO few of them left in Ireland (nobody knows exactly how many, we haven't counted, but a rough guess is about 400 to 500 breeding pairs). The box was intended for a Barn Owl (we got the plans from the Barn Owl Trust in the UK) and as far as we know they're the only ones that like to live in boxes, but we haven't seen it yet, so we can't be 100% sure.
Any kind of owl would do, though. We're not that fussy.
According to Birdwatch Ireland, Snowy Owls only visit bogs in the north-west during winter when they get hungry in the Arctic, so it's not likely to be one of those. Short Eared Owls sometimes visit mountain uplands and coastal lowlands in the south and east during the winter and, on the rare occasions that they do breed, they do it in the mountains so the chances are it isn't one of them either.
It's more likely to be a Long Eared Owl or a Barn Owl.
Long Eared Owls (let's call them LEOs for short) are common all across Ireland and, unlike BOs (see what I did there?), nobody's particularly worried about them. The big reason for this seems to be that there are plenty of places for them to live. LEOs like to roost in dense stands of trees, especially conifer forests - and Ireland has a good few of those. Barn Owls on the other hand are facing extinction in Ireland, which is why they're 'Red List'-ed.
We know what has pushed them to the brink - homelessness, starvation and poisoning, basically - but we don't know which has had the biggest impact (though it hardly seems to matter). There isn't much information, nor is there much money to be spent collecting said information. The main ways scientists (and therefore policy-makers) find out about birds like the Barn Owl are through volunteers calling Birdwatch Ireland or the National Biodiversity Data Centre with sightings, taking part in the Bird Atlas survey or sending records to BirdTrack. And how many people do you know who do that? Yes, exactly.
An absence of Barn Owls, Barn Owl data, or both? (BirdTrack, 2015)
A Barn Owl's favourite place to live is in the hollow of an old Elm tree. Which is problematic because, thanks to Dutch Elm disease, there aren't many Elms left (let alone old ones that might have holes in). A second preference would be the hollow of any old tree, but since Ireland's forest cover is mostly very new (less than 100 years old), there aren't many hollow old trees around - of any species. Their third favourite place to live is old ruins and barns (hence their name). Ireland used to have lots of these, but we knocked a lot of them down during the Celtic Tiger to build new ones, or they were neglected and fell down on their own. All of which leaves the Barn Owl out in the cold…
Barn Owl habitats (Birdwatch Ireland, 2015)
…which mightn't be so awful, if it wasn't hungry and poisoned too. The loss of small scale tillage, the change from hay to silage and the removal of hedgerows across rural Ireland have meant that there are fewer and fewer places to look for food, and less food to eat in those places. All the while the food that is available is frequently riddled with toxic poisons laid down by the likes of you and I to keep mice and rats away from our houses. These 'bio-accumulate' in predators like owls, slowly killing them (much like neonicotinoids and various other pesticides are doing to bees, but that's a whole other blog post). A research project based between UCC and Birdwatch Ireland is seeking owl carcasses in order to test their livers for toxins and try to figure out how they died, so hopefully we'll have some data in the near future.
In the meantime, I'll be listening out for a hoot (LEO) or a screech (BO) this evening… Will post news of species identification as soon as possible!
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