I first became aware of The Barn Owl Trust when I read their authoritative book – the Barn Owl Conservation Handbook. This has informed most of the measures I have taken at UWNR, to create conducive habitat. (The other text, which has been hugely influential, is JR Martin’s The Barn Owl). About 3 years ago, I made contact with Rick Lockwood – one of the Trust’s amazing Ecologists. Over this time we have spoken about things like topping heights, to ensure the grass sward is not disturbed, heights of hunting perches & when and how to clean out the Barn Owl box.
About 12 months ago we talked about holding a Barn Owl workshop at UWNR and last weekend we did just that. It was a resounding success! Rick taught us all about Barn Owl ecology - behaviours and habitat needs. Armed with this new knowledge we then built boxes - for situating indoors and outdoors. We finished this extraordinary day by looking at all the measures, which are taken at UWNR, to ensure Barn Owls thrive and survive. I loved Rick’s line when he described the new Barn Owl barn at UWNR as ‘extreme Barn Owl conservation’! Ka-ching!
A week before the workshop, helped by the wonderful young people who do the John Muir Award at UWNR, I decided to gather in the Dormouse nursery nesting tubes. The persistent and heavy rainfall of the past few months was beginning to damage the tubes, so retrieval seemed like a great idea. Everything was going perfectly to plan until I came to the nesting tube, where Jack had found a Dormice nursery nest last year. Very inelegantly the retrieval of this gave me, for the very first time at UWNR, visual conformation that there are Dormice here. In fact 2 Dormice!
Lets run that again – IT IS CONFIRMED, THERE ARE DORMICE AT UWNR!
Friend & Ecologist Gareth Harris tells me that Dormice have not been recorded in this part of South West Wiltshire for decades – THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL!