Within todays blog we have uploaded a few images covering a lot of subjects that had a lot to do with todays work here at the Barn Owl Centre.
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| Lets start by an image showing a wild Barn Owl hunting & hovering for prey within rough grassland. |
Today was quite an active day & very productive indeed especially with the new aviaries we are building. All timber framing including roof timbers are 99% complete, this means we will be soon putting on the plywood & the timber cladding. The weather has been perfect except for a brief shower at the end of the day.
For information about our New Aviary area we are building, please go to the first page of the blog
In addition & now at the stage we are with the aviaries, we are now looking at bringing in the materials needed to create what we have called the Owl Garden, this is going to be a communal garden area to compliment the area in front of the bird aviaries, a great place for our visitors to relax & enjoy the birds in our care. The plans look great so more about this later when we start to capture some images showing its progress.
With regards to the Owl Nest Workshop,
we now have a good quantity of Owl Boxes in stock together with some of our new
Owl Manors close to completion, this means that the
Owl Manors required for orders are on track & ready to go out to their different site locations next week, the landowners & of course the wild Barn Owls are going to love them.
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Designed by the Barn Owl Centre & called the Owl Manor, this is aimed to benefit wild Barn Owls with a more spacious Owl box where it outsizes any other Owl box on the market. Built like a Barn to offer Barn Owls a bigger home where a tree is not required, perfect to support field margins which are the Barn Owls favourite hunting grounds.
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| Here is one of our normal Owl Boxes for which we have over 1200 positioned on our own project sites & over 2500 sold UK wide, this Owl Box has been occupied by Barn Owls for a few years now. This has proven to be a very successful nest site, in time we expect the above Owl Manor will benefit Barn Owl too, it's simple a huge Manor House built for the open countryside for Barn Owls |
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| This is a young Barn Owl photographed hunting for small rodents such as the Short=tailed Vole. |
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| Here is a wild Barn Owl that was found completely soaked through due to heavy rain. She was brought in, dried & re-released back to wild, prior to release we positioned a number of Owl boxes within the vicinity to help her. Now she can look at taking shelter when she needs to. |
The office has been very busy too with lots of bookings being taken for our experiences including customers calling to order gift vouchers, lots of enquiries have also come in via the telephone where guidance is needed to help encourage localised Owl populations. With the dispersal of young Owls now getting in full swing, this is the time of year when
our conservation work & the service we offer increases, if we can assist landowners & offer sound advice to help the Owls on their land, we will, Owl Conservation isn't really a difficult subject, its simply about getting the the fundamental aspects in place, which can offer Owls the stability they need to survive through the next 6 months, these are suitable habitat conditions, a healthy & accessible food supply & decent housing to help create a safe haven to roost.
At midday we only had a single person booked into one of our
Hawk & Owl Experiences, the experience even with a single person booked in, still went ahead because we feel it simply connects people to wildlife. All was enjoyed & to make it more special, Vince who manages the Centre took out his camera to capture some personal photos so they could be taken away with him, there is no charge for this service because
Vince loves his photography plus the memory captured is more important. Below are some of the images captured during his experience.
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| Taken during today's Hawk & Owl Experience, An image can speak a thousand than words |
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| Leighton the Buzzard also had a great time too |
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| This was taken whilst we were out flying Turner the Eagle Owl who weighed in at 3lb 14ozs |
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| A great Hawk & Owl Experience had by all |
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| We do take bookings with or with Gift Vouchers, if you want to speak to us, call us on 01452 383999. We would love to share our experiences with you, we also cater for children from 4 years upwards including Birthday Parties. |
The afternoon was more of an admin period with Becky getting on with lots of important things in the office. Juliette was sorting out the booking dates for forthcoming fundraising events & Carl our handyman/Bird Handler was de-weeding the area around the new aviaries. Vicky who is one our fundraising staff, helped out by re-labelling a vast amount of charity boxes ready for all the fundraising dates ahead. With a good supportive team of volunteers it looks like the rest of October & November is going to be a very busy for us especially with the diary looking busy with experiences.
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| Here is an image showing one of our team of volunteers out in the community raising support & promoting the work of our charity From left to right are Becky, Lauren & Jim. |
The Centre birds are all doing well with them all in good shape & doing well in their training programs, now the cooler days are with us, training & flying will be stepped up, this is to benefit the birds fitness plus it will enable us to fly more birds with our visitors during their experiences.
Below is an image showing the range of birds we look after & support, many of them have been handed to us over the years as unwanted pets & unwanted birds from other Keepers & Centres.
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| To see more images of birds, please take a look at our Photo Gallery on the web site |
Here is a
QUICK LINK to start of our online Photo Gallery, we hope you enjoy the birds like we do
Thanks for taking the time to drop in to read our blog.
