Len Pick Trust Owl Project

Today we briefly saw the fourth egg.

It was laid last Friday.

The female barn owl will do all the incubating and we can expect the first chick to hatch in the third week of May if all goes well.

Tonight the female barn owl lifted off the nest to reveal three eggs. The third would have been laid on Tuesday evening.

The fourth egg should be here by Friday lunchtime.

The male provides all the food for his mate during incubation. Viewers will notice he disappears for long periods at night. The settled weather this week will help him to hunt.

This morning the female owl laid her first egg.

There has been a build up of prey brought in during the past two or three days by the male.

Barn owls incubate their clutch from the first egg, meaning the chicks hatch at different intervals.

Eggs are laid at approximately two and a half day intervals so we can expect the next egg later on Sunday night.

Regular viewers will have noticed both birds are often present during daylight hours in the nest chamber.

There has been a huge build up of pellets since the last photo (below) taken nearly five months ago.

Egg laying could take place anytime in the next few weeks.

There is often a build up of prey items prior to the first egg.

This is courtesy of the male, who is keen to show he will make a good father!

Thanks to some hard work by our Len Pick Trust volunteers, the owl tower nest box is looking very smart and we already have a barn owl regularly roosting there.

The photo shows a few black pellets on the fresh substrate.

Owls don’t build a nest so it is essential they have something to lay their eggs on to stop them rolling around.

The pellets are full of the fur and bones of their digested prey. The birds can only process the flesh of the rodents they eat and the rest is ejected through their beaks onto the floor.

Over the course of the year, hundreds of these pellets can build up.

2025 was disastrous for barn owls. South of a line from Lincoln to Chester they had their worst breeding season ever recorded.

The wet late winter was followed by a drought which decimated the vole population. Short tailed voles are the staple prey item of most owls. Given favourable conditions over the next few months their numbers will build up again.

Let’s hope for a successful breeding season in 2026.

A warm welcome back to viewers of our owl tower live feed!

Viewers will have noticed we are still having occasional problems with the camera. In the absence of a live feed, we have added a static picture from the tower which is refreshed every 10 minutes. We hope that this will be more stable for the time being.

We have noticed fewer visits by the barn owls this winter. Usually they increase as we get nearer to the first egg date.

We still see the nest occupied overnight but this has been rare recently.

It is still not too late for a pair to take up residence.

The most likely reason for their absence is one of the birds has perished or moved away with another partner.

In which case, the remaining adult has to find a new partner.

So all is not lost, but we would like to see some occupancy in the next two weeks.

We have had another successful season in the Len Pick owl tower.

Two chicks have successfully fledged and will soon be on their way to finding their own area to live in away from the adults.

Our original four eggs produced two healthy chicks. The weather has meant a lack of prey particularly field voles so our parent birds have done really well.

We look forward with optimism to next year.

In the meantime, the camera will be switched off ready for maintenance work.

Yesterday our chicks were ringed under licence with a few of the LPT trustees observing.

Both were males and looked very healthy and well fed.

They were six weeks old yesterday and will soon be venturing into the tunnel to look out over the farmland.

The camera has been playing up again so it hasn’t been easy to follow the action in the nest.

We had some heavy rain in mid May and our brood of four chicks are now down to two.

This is typical for barn owls. They often suffer in bad weather when it is difficult for the adults to hunt.

The chicks are now five weeks old and we shall soon be ringing them.

Our eldest chick is already two weeks old.

The fifth egg didn’t hatch but we have four healthy chicks.

Let’s hope the weather continues to be good for the male to keep catching lots of small rodents.