A ghost-like barn owl flying low over open farmland at dawn or dusk is one of Nature’s hold-your-breath sights. The iconic beauty Tyto alba is a brilliantly adapted nocturnal predator, its soft feathers enabling silent flight (hence its country name, Old Hushwing) and its heart-shaped face funnelling the smallest sounds towards asymmetrical ears that pinpoint prey. Large wings and a lightweight body aid hovering; long legs, toes and talons plunge through vegetation to grab field voles, shrews or mice.
Anna Field is well acquainted with the beauty and brilliance of barn owls. Known to many as Cotswolds National Landscape’s programme manager for the Glorious Cotswold Grasslands project, she is also a trustee and volunteer with Gloucestershire Raptor Monitoring Group (GRMG) in her spare time. Established in 2014, GRMG gathers information on raptors within the county, contributing to conservation and education about birds of prey.
Anna Field of Gloucestershire Raptor Monitoring Group sets up a barn owl nest box. Photo: cotswolds-nl.org.uk With a lifelong interest in birds, a degree in Natural Sciences and a Masters in Conservation Ecology, Anna has been monitoring and contributing to British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) surveys for some 20 years and has been a trained BTO ringer for nearly 15 years.
‘My two main areas of interest are raptors and farmland birds, and barn owls are where that meets,’ she says. ‘There are lots of really good reasons why we should be studying barn owls. They are top of the food chain and monitoring them is helpful in understanding the state of the whole ecosystem –predators can only thrive when supported by a healthy underlying ecosystem.
‘With over 3,000 barn owl nests monitored by BTO volunteers in Britain and Ireland each year, we are gathering a wealth of information and contributing to a really big dataset that can enable population changes to be detected quickly.’ ‘Everyone likes barn owls, and they’re great for farmers; a pair can consume thousands of small rodents each year, providing an effective form of natural pest control!’
Barn owl numbers suffered marked declines through the 20th century. Aside from factors like loss of hunting habitat through farm intensification, and an increase in road casualties as our roads have become busier, a major cause was the loss of sheltered locations suitable for nesting and roosting such as old stone barns (replaced by modern metal buildings or converted for housing) and old trees with owl-friendly holes.
Fortunately, widespread conservation efforts focused on providing barn owl nest boxes have since helped to move the species’ conservation status from Amber (concern) to Green (stable) in 2015. In the annual State of the UK Barn Owl Population survey (2023), using information collated by the Barn Owl Trust from independent groups like GRMG, 1,559 of monitored sites held active barn owl nests; of which 36 were in Gloucestershire.
‘Barn owls are now doing well in the Cotswolds, particularly in pastural river valleys and on open farmland with extensive grass margins,’ Anna says.
‘We had a lot of interest from farmers and it was really nice to collaborate with them,’ Anna says. ‘I visited and gave advice on where to site boxes, the farmers put them up, and now I return each year to monitor them. It takes time for the owls to find boxes but the results are starting to come through and many were used last year.
‘Barn owls like tussocky, rough grassland which supports good numbers of voles for hunting, whether in field margins or parts of fields. Ideally nest boxes are installed inside barns, but they can also be put in hedgerow trees if no barns are available.’
The barn owl is Schedule 1 protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act and only people with a licence like Anna are permitted to check nest boxes, which she does mainly in the north Cotswolds. Another volunteer, Rich Harris, based at Southam, has a similar-sized project around Bishop’s Cleeve and Winchcombe, and together they monitor most sites in the north Cotswolds.
Anna now has some 225 boxes up and will have time to check about half of them each year, with the help of volunteers. Average clutches are four to six eggs, but once a brood of eight chicks was recorded at Hawling – which all fledged. ‘This is very unusual, with the average number of fledged chicks in Gloucestershire at around 2.7 chicks fledged per nest,’ she says. ‘Barn owls live for approximately four years so the average number of fledged chicks here is enough to maintain a stable population.’
‘Through Countryside Stewardship, which started in 2015, farmers used to be able to get a £100 to put up a barn owl box, but a couple of years ago that was slashed to £38, yet a quality A-frame barn owl box costs £100–£150. That puts more pressure on farmers to fund boxes themselves or for us to find grants – in recent years, I’ve been grateful for help from Farming in Protected Landscapes, the Co-Op, and Gloucestershire Naturalists’ Society.
‘There are always farmers wanting to put up boxes and existing ones regularly need replacing too, so there is a lot of demand. Hopefully we can find ways to meet that because the future of barn owls in the Cotswolds depends on it.’
For advice about Barn Owls including habitat management and nest boxes, or if you would like to sponsor a Barn Owl box, email Anna Field: [email protected]
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