Owl Action on the Nunnery Reserve

During the winter, Paul Taylor and the Nunnery Fisheries team have been hard at work making and erecting nesting boxes, in the hope of attracting owls and Kestrels. This is allows us to complete nest record cards for the Nest Record Scheme and to ring the young birds and possibly their parents too.

Yesterday we completed our first inspection of these boxes, with some interesting results. The first box had a roosting male Barn Owl (we were of course armed with the appropriate schedule 1 licence) and while attempting to sort out the ladder for the second box a Tawny Owl emerged to see what was going on. This bird was sitting on 3 eggs (below) so fingers crossed for 3 lucky ringers when these chicks hatch. Hopefully this nest will follow the progress of the nest the BTO is monitoring.


By this stage we were in a very positive frame of mind but we actually had mixed results. The next Kestrel box had sticks and feathers inside and another owl box was full of sticks, which were probably the work of Jackdaws. Then while also trying to find a Long-tailed Tit nest and failing, the next owl box was empty.

The next two owl boxes produced a Squirrel family and 3 Barn Owls roosting. Hopefully these Barn Owls will start to lay shortly. We were impressed though with the raptor tally for the day, Tawny Owl, Barn Owl, Kestrel fly over and the first Red Kite in Norfolk for Dave Leech.

Mealy good

This year the BirdTrack Challenge and TEAL Cup (a 'bit of fun' between BTO and RSPB staff) have triggered heightened levels of wildlife recording on the reserves around the two organisations' HQs. Naturally birds have been the main focus so far, so it was with no small measure of envy that BTO staff read about their RSPB counterparts' excellent start to the year on the redpoll front. Much scouring of the modest numbers of redpolls at the Nunnery Lakes ensued, but unfortunately the first two 'interesting' redpolls found did not give good enough views to clinch their ID.

All that changed when a fine Common Redpoll appeared in our winter ringing site, a patch of blackthorn scrub between two extensive rows of alder. The bird in question found its way to our nyger feeder on Thursday 10th February and was also there the following day, so it was with an air of anticipation that we opened the nets on Saturday morning. Sure enough, the first net round came up trumps:

This individual had a wing length was 76mm and the condition of the tertials and primaries aged it as a 6 (the condition of the tail was attributed to the damp overnight conditions). Compared to Lesser Redpoll, the underparts were strikingly pale, lacking most of the buff wash and being less extensively streaked:

Later the same morning, a second bird was caught (also a 6, wing length 79mm), this time providing direct comparison with Lesser Redpoll: