1st June 2023
Early this morning it became obvious the barn owls have a final clutch size of four eggs
There will now be a quiet month whilst we await the hatching of the chicks in early July.
The female will incubate these eggs night and day. The male will be responsible for bringing her food every night.
The weather will play a big part in how successful he is. Not too many wet and windy nights would be good!
Owl 29.05.
Last night, on the stroke of eleven o’clock, the female laid her fourth egg.
If there is to be a fifth it should arrive on Thursday.
This morning at 03.07 hours, we saw the third egg.
The fourth is due on Monday evening.
At 9.41am today the barn owl female laid her second egg.
The next one is due on Friday afternoon/evening.
Earlier on today, at 1347 hours, we caught sight of the first egg.
The owls are very late in Lincolnshire this year.
This is usually prey related.
Hopefully the voles and mice are increasing at just the right time.
The next egg is due on Tuesday night.
Yesterday’s down time with camera was, we believe, due to a power cut in the locality. Happily, the camera feed came back after the power was restored without the necessity of any work to the camera and feed being required for, as you can see, at least one of the owls seems to have taken up what looks like semi-permanent residence in the box. We have had some wet and windy weather over the last couple of days so it makes sense for them to be in the tower. We are now moving towards the mating season so we should see more of both. Fingers crossed!!
The sun is beginning to shine and down the Fen things are beginning to stir!
We took advantage today of the dry weather and in the temporary absence of our tenants we have carried out some further improvements to the camera feed and so far (fingers & toes crossed !!) we now seem to have a glorious permanent technicolour feed.
Just before half past ten last night the male barn owl brought a vole to the nest as the female was removing the egg shell from around the new born chick.
We now have six healthy chicks
.
Late yesterday afternoon, soon after half past five, our fifth chick hatched.
Fingers crossed for our last egg hatching sometime early on Saturday morning.
Yesterday morning, around 7am, the fourth barn owl egg hatched.
The fifth is due on Wednesday afternoon.
