Each winter, I restore and renovate bird boxes ready for the breeding season ahead. It can be a messy job.
Over the years, I've put up more than 250 bird boxes across Yorkshire. Over time they can get quite congested. Watch as I clean out one barn owl box crammed with owl pellets. Thankfully it is a large box and there's still, just, enough space for the owls to get in!
Owl pellets
Owls throw up the parts of their food that they can't digest, like the fur and skeleton of voles, in the form of pellets. There are enough pellets in this nest to fill a wheelbarrow! It's not all messy work. I send the most intact pellets to students and school children so that they can learn about what barn owls are eating.
When I dissect one of the pellets I discover the remains of a day-old chick inside. That means the barn owl that lives in this nest is flying all the way to my house, two miles away, to find food. Now that the nest is clear, there's more room for the owl to make a nest scrape, so, fingers-crossed we will get more chicks this year.
