Oh what a night...

On Friday, Ken Kinsella took these amazing up-close photos of our owls from a temporary hide he erected in the field. "Friday evening was very bright and ensconced in my little hide I waited until 10pm before the first BO appeared," he said. "It immediately flew away followed by the others in rapid order; an indication of the chicks' maturity."

This is the adult female, Francie

So it seems that our little owlets are growing up! It's all happening so fast. Two weeks ago they were only just emerging from the nest. Last week we watched them learn how to hunt. And now, they're fledged! Last night, we went down the river at about 11pm and hid under a beech tree as the owls flew up and down the meadow, hunting. We could hear them screeching - a haunting and almost violent sound, it's no mystery that these birds are associated with death and the darkness in folklore. Watching them glide above us so silently was incredible.

We expect them to continue to return to the nest for a few weeks yet as they get used to life on their own, but there's a chance that the mum has laid a second clutch. If so, she'll chase this lot away from the nest when the new babies hatch so we'll be keeping an eye out for that behaviour in the coming weeks.

In other news, last night we invented a new cocktail that we've named 'Francie's Parliament' in honour of the mama owl. Here's the recipe:

Take a big jug and put in...

Loads of ice

Two pear ice lollies

Loads of frozen raspberries

Elderflower cordial (homemade)

Gin

Fizzy water (or Prosecco if you're on a mission)

Swish it about a bit and enjoy!

Trail camera in action!

Our motion-sensor trail camera (also funded by the Veolia Environment Community Fund) has come into its own this week and captured some truly ghostly images of our owls.

    

See the creepy eyes in the background?*

 

I think this is an 'in for the kill' shot: look at the legs shooting down!

   

Just landed (NB This shot was taken before I set the date and time properly on the camera)

*Sadly I think the creepy eyes are actually the upstairs lights in Caroline and Ivan's house :(

It's a family of five. FIVE!!!!

See? Mum, Dad and three babies. I took this photo hunkered down among the oats (sorry Mr Reilly, I stuck to the tracks I swear).

Update: I've been thinking about names. The collective noun for owls is a 'parliament', so it seems only right to name the dad George (after George Clinton). My dad used to tell stories about Francie the owl when I was little, so that's what we'll call the mum. As for the chicks, last night I was introduced to the story of 'Owl Babies' and, seeing as the three chicks are steps and stairs just like the characters in the story, we'll call them (from biggest to smallest) Sarah, Percy and Bill. 

Barn Owls: are you ready for your close up?

Thanks to Ken Kinsella for his sensitive photographing of our beautiful Barn Owls last night. Here are some of his pictures:

Mum (Francie) on the right, chick (as yet unnamed) on the left. At the moment we're not sure if the third bird we saw on Friday night is the Dad or another chick. It's quite dark by the time they emerge from the nest so very hard to tell who's who. We'll keep trying to figure it out and report back as soon as possible!

No, wait, it's three

At least three. We definitely saw three. We *may* have seen four, but we're not certain. We only got photos of two at a time, though. What we assume to be the mum and dad came out first and flew up into the trees, leaving the juvenile (again, assuming this) to sit on the ledge and practice his/her wing-flapping.

Here are the best photos so far:

Two!

Two-it Two (sorry I couldn't resist)

A little owly face

Looks like a fluffy juvenile, right? Or maybe he's just shaking his tail feather

Little owly face again

A perfect profile

...and the best til last :)

Thanks to Lyn and Mike for coming down and patiently waiting to take these shots. I think we need a parparazzo lens though to really get the detail in low light. Any volunteers?

And then there were two...

So we finally confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that it was in fact a Barn Owl, as expected, when we caught a glimpse of it flying out of the box about two weeks ago. Our local newspaper the Kilkenny People ran a lovely piece on us in this week's edition. But I wish we'd waited until next week to tell the world because - and I'm still in shock here - I just looked out the window with the binoculars and THERE ARE TWO!!!!

I can't believe it. TWO!!! A pair. I watched them for about 20 minutes, preening their feathers and waking up to the night.

See if you can make them out from these absolutely awful photos (low light, hand-held compact camera and binoculars do not a great shot make, as I discovered).

Can you sort of see them? Two beige blobs sitting on the edge of the nest box? 

One of which looks like it might be part of a tree but isn't?

I need a better camera. Damn.

Here's the leftovers from a recent meal for one of them.

And here's a pic of the piece from the Kilkenny People - I'll have to let them know so they can put an update in next week's paper.

Inside an owl's pellet

Using some very scientific equipment including mum's hairpin, a pokey thing from a manicure kit and a Henry VIII ruler I bought at Hampton Court Palace in London when I was 8 (With My Own Money), I began to dissect the owl pellet.

Owl pellets are basically little balls of undigestible bones, nails and fur that owls sick up rather than poo out. This one was found spat out on the grass under the owl box. Here it is before I started fiddling with it:

Here's a skull I found and a piece of vertebrae, I think:

Here are some claws, a rib and a bit of backbone:

Ok so obviously it's a small rodent, but there my knowledge runs out. Any suggestions anyone?

We have an owl!

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.

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!

The owl box is up!

Now all we need is the owl...

Supermassive thanks to Val Walshe and Kieran and Larry Reilly and Joe for their deft work with the machinery!

Extra special thanks to Larry for spotting that we were in need of a hand and directing the teleporter our way. Much appreciated :)

A magnitude of thank yous is also due to Michael O'Gorman for the fabulous frame that attached the box to post.

Going up...

...and up...

...and up!

But how are we gonna get the rope off?

Job done!

New Barn Owl Box

Paddy made this AMAZING owl box. It's going up on a post as soon as the field is dry enough to get a tractor down there. We've got a 5ft hole and a 20ft larch ESB post for the job. Can't wait :)

                                                               Paddy with the owl box