Trip to Slindon with The National Trust

I met up with Katie at the Slindon National Trust office to check four of their owl boxes. It’s been 5 years since I came here and so much has changed. More boxes have been erected and some of the older ones replaced.

It was fabulous to see Katie and catch up on the past 5 years!

In the first barn we checked we flushed a barn owl from the rafters, the box (a new one) is high up on the rafter just below the roof. Sadly we had missed the fledglings this time- the box was half full of shredded pellets and there were a lot of downy feathers/fluff in the box.

The second box we couldn’t get to this time but I will have another go.

The third box we checked was on a huge old tree facing over a field of crops. Again this was a third full of shredded owl pellets but on this occassion we found an adult Stock Dove on 2 eggs. She was ringed and put back.

At the final box we saw a Stock Dove fly from the nest and on peering in I found a Stoick Dove chick (too small to ring) and a warm egg.