Local wildlife photographer Ian Nelson sent this wonderful set of barn owl images to us, despite knowing they couldn’t be entered into the reader’s photography pages this month.
We have just one rule for the monthly photography pages – the images included must have been taken in the preceding month (the images featured in this September issue will all have been taken in August).
However, Ian took these images earlier in the summer and then deliberately withheld sharing them for a couple of months.
‘I didn’t submit them because the barn is possibly identifiable,’ he says. ‘Sadly not everyone understands how to observe wildlife responsibly, and I didn’t want the owls to be disturbed by an influx of visitors. Four chicks were being raised, and I didn’t want to risk them being stressed to the point that they abandoned the young.’
All four chicks have now fledged, and although they break the rules for the reader’s photography section, we couldn’t resist sharing such stunning images of one of the nation’s most beloved birds for everyone to enjoy.
Did you know …
- The barn owl is not only the world’s most widely distributed species of owl, but is also one of the most widespread of all birds – it is found on every continent except Antarctica
- Though they reside throughout the tropics, they avoid areas with cold winters. Scotland has the most northern breeding barn owls in the Northern Hemisphere
- In eastern England barn owls are far more likely to nest in trees than in barns.
- Barn owls don’t hoot! The male has a long, harsh scream that lasts about two seconds
- The chicks make their first flights when they are around 50 days old, but they won’t be independent of their parents for another month
- British barn owls have distinctive white breasts, but in central and eastern Europe they are a shade of dark yellow-orange
- Barn Owls do not build a nest: they lay their eggs directly onto the previous years’ nest debris, a compacted layer of old owl pellets!
