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When checking a box in the Hambleden Valley, we encountered a female Barn Owl that had been ringed 230km away in Devon in 2021 as a chick.
This represents the furthest dispersal of a juvenile Barn Owl recorded by our project.
BTO records do however include juveniles dispersing over 500km within UK, as well as exceptionally four birds being found overseas, one each in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain.
The map below shows the dispersal of the Devon bird to Buckinghamshire:
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| Barn Owl brood of 5 chicks |
With 40 Barn Owl chicks ringed from 16 successful nests, overall productivity in 2023 was slightly above average for recent years.
Egg laying started in the second-half of April, later than in previous years, with the earlier nesting pairs struggling to raise only 1-2 chicks, and several nest attempts failing at the egg stage.
Those pairs that delayed nesting to June/July fared better with some raising broods of 4 and 5.
A further 7 pairs failed to make any nest attempt this year. |
| Brood of 2 kestrel chicks |
There were 9 nest attempts (10 in 2022), of which 8 were successful, with 19 chicks fledged from the 7 nests where chicks were ringed.
However productivity of 2.7 chicks fledged per successful nest was down from last year's 3.5.
The increasing number of boxes with Kestrel nests is further evidence of this species recovery from a low point 20-30 years ago.
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| Tawny Owl (adult female) |
This makes as good a result as we've had in previous years.
Tawny Owls usually start egg-laying by end-March, earlier than both Little and Barn Owls.
Update: single chicks were subsequently ringed at each nest. One of the adult females had been ringed in 2016, and is estimated now to be in its tenth calendar year.
