Ask a farmer what is his favourite bird and I think that many might say the barn owl. Mine anyway, with a close second being the swallow. Another question could be: “When did you last see one?” The answer might be that there was always a pair in the farmyard, but sadly no more. There are reasons for this, and I will discuss these now.
The barn owl has many threats. These include being hit by traffic when hunting along rough grassland by busy roads. They can also be drowned in half-full drinking troughs. Female birds can be really filthy after rearing a brood of young. The nest sites can be really stinky, so the bird needs to wash herself. The soft feathers become waterlogged and the bird drowns. Easily sorted. A block of wood in the trough or a sack or netting tied firmly in place to act as a ladder. A full trough can be escaped from.
What else? Habitat, lack of nest sites, and second-generation anti-coagulant rat poisons. As regards habitat, the barn owl is not a woodland bird but needs open mixed farming country for preference. Rough grassland with some cereal stubble left to over-winter is ideal. The rough grassland is the feeding ground for small rodents, which are the main prey items.
Now for the rat and mouse poisons. There are now guidelines for responsible rodenticide use. Get a leaflet from your local Teagasc office. All very well for a start, but really money spent on researching safe poisons should be a priority. If you really want to play safe, have some farmyard cats, plus use cage traps or snap traps inside secure wooden boxes. The very best rat-catcher is the barn owl itself.
Lack of safe nest sites is another problem for our hard-pressed owls. Hollow trees are fine, but are now few and far between. A good spot is a quiet, disused building – a nest box should be put up as high as possible in the darkest end of the building. Owls can nest on bales in a building, which can of course be removed at short notice, and cats can climb up and take chicks. Boxes on trees in my neck of the woods are invariably taken over by jackdaws. If you have a nice old stone building, please do not put up netting wire on the windows. People do this to keep out feral pigeons. Without thinking, they have also excluded owls and swallows.
Is it all bad news and doom and gloom? Not actually. In the southwest, the barn owl is doing well. This is partly due to the arrival of the bank vole. These animals provide a new good safe food source as, not being in farmyards, they are unlikely to have poisons in their systems. In Ireland we have 450 to 550 breeding pairs of barn owls. The UK figure is 4,000 to 5,000. A good source of further information is the BirdWatch Ireland website and the UK-based Barn Owl Trust. They both have plans for nestboxes.
I cannot recomend the Birdwatch Ireland publication Barn Owls in Ireland highly enough. Get a copy from them. It is free of charge, but they would appreciate a self-addressed envelope for €1.65.
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