The two barn owl chicks are growing fast.
Food is still scarce as there aren’t many voles around.
The male is seen less and less, suggesting he may have another female nesting nearby.
Our hen bird is out hunting for long periods every night .
The unhatched eggs are scattered now.

It is now eleven days since the second chick hatched so we must assume the remaining two barn owl eggs won’t hatch.

As for the “rogue” stock dove egg it is anyone’s guess what will happen, but the odds are stacked against it.

There is also a possibility the male owl isn’t bringing in enough prey. On Monday he visited the nest with a mouse at 11pm and wasn’t seen again that night. The female eventually left the chicks unguarded for two spells, eventually catching a mouse herself.

It is very rare in the barn owl world for mum to leave tiny young, especially as she left them at one point for an hour and four minutes!

So we continue to watch with bated breath this ongoing saga.

There is a shortage of field voles this year due to the unhelpful weather conditions in the spring.

The harvest cannot come soon enough for the owls as there will then be a brief glut of mice.

It is nearly a week since we saw the second barn owl chick hatch so we must assume the third egg is not viable.
We now look to the fourth egg hatching which could be this weekend.
The two chicks are growing fast and prey is becoming more plentiful.
On Thursday night the male brought in an extra six rodents!

Last night, at 9.20pm, the second chick broke out of its shell.
This was much later than anticipated.
The time between egg 1 and egg 2 hatching was eighty hours.
If goes well, the third chick should hatch around Tuesday evening.

2nd chick breaking out of shell

One of our regular owl watchers witnessed a stock dove egg appearing recently.

She writes ….

“Hello, I just wanted to get a message to the person who does the owl cam blog. They have written that an extra egg has been laid. In fact this is a pigeon egg as I witnessed it being kicked into the nest box when the female was clearing twigs from the box entrance. I posted on your Facebook page about it. After a couple of hours she seem to notice it just laying there away from her own eggs and promptly rolled it over and started to incubate it too.
So I think it will be very interested when/if it hatches!”

At 1312 today Class 1 at Broad Town Primary School in Swindon saw the first egg hatch.

Well done children.

The next chick is due early on Saturday morning.

The photo shows the female moving the newly hatched eggshell.

Eagle eyed viewers will notice we had extra egg on Monday. We have no idea why this was laid. A first for our owl cam.

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.

3e 27-05-2023

This morning at 03.07 hours, we saw the third egg.
The fourth is due on Monday evening.