After a super busy baby season in our Raptor Hospital, the past month has been spent managing all of our hack sites across the area.
At the start of August we opened the door to our local Barn Owl hack pen. These two Barn Owlets arrived having been found outside their nests and needed some time to finish growing their feathers. Once we were happy that they could fly, they were moved to the temporary hack pen where they could get used to life in the wild while still contained. After a few weeks we were happy with their progress (monitored via our camera traps) and opened the door, releasing them onto the nearby farmland.
These two seemed reluctant to leave the immediate area around the hack pen, and were seen returning to the pen for a few nights after their release. We received a message from the farmer who saw them both using one of his nestboxes further down the track, which he was very pleased with as this was an unoccupied box in an area with a plentiful supply of rodents!
This hack pen wasn’t empty for very long though. Once we were satisfied that the Barn Owls had vacated the area, a Little Owl was moved in. This Little Owl arrived quite late in the season for a bird so young, and was found starving and dehydrated. We suspect it had struggled to find food following the heatwaves, with the ground so dry there are few suitably nutritional insects around for young Owls to search for while they build up capacity to hunt for rodents.
After some good meals with us, it was moved into the vacant hack pen and after a week or so we opened the door to give it freedom. As you can see from the video, it was very keen to leave, and we have captured no further footage of it on our cameras.
Releasing young birds in groups can help with their long term survival as they give each other confidence and watch for different hunting strategies. Two of our group of Kestrels were almost certainly related (picked up within a few hours of each other from Stowupland), while all the others were unrelated.
After spending time in our largest aviary in the Hospital, they were moved to one of our new hack pens which is very spacious. We were able to monitor them on remote cameras and saw evidence of them hunting for insects and small rodents inside the pen. After a few weeks, we were pleased to invite Ben and Rob from Spirit of the Wild, who brought one of them to us after it was found in a carpark, to help release the group.
Not all birds need to go into a hack pen before release. This adult Tawny Owl was found on the roadside suffering from concussion. Upon assessment, we discovered that she was also missing a toe! This appeared to be an old injury and as she was in good body condition, clearly wasn’t hampering her survival. After a few days with us she showed signs of making a full recovery from her vehicle collision and our falconer Dolly was able to return her to a woodland near where she was found.
Once again, we want to extend our sincere thanks to all the landowners and managers who give us permission to release on their land. We are also very grateful to the Lord Belstead Charitable Trust, Geofffrey Burton Charitable Trust and Mrs L D Rope Charitable Trust for their funding and support which has allowed us to build new hack pens this year, enabling us to take in more birds than usual and give them the best possible chance at long term survival.