Ringing of Barn Owl chicks has been undertaken by BirdWatch Ireland since summer 2007, and is providing much valuable insight into their movements and longevity. Around 800 Barn Owls have been ringed, and the recovery rate is relatively high for this species compared with others, for example, about one in ten Barn Owls ringed are re-trapped or recovered (usually dead) at a later stage. For example, for Storm Petrels, this figure is about one in a hundred. Part of it is down to survey and ringing effort, and in part no doubt because of their beauty and rarity (and often their conspicuousness), dead Barn Owls are often reported to BirdWatch Ireland, most often as road casualties.
In total, breeding success has been monitored at over 800 sites in the Republic of Ireland between 2008 and 2016 and in that time 750 owlets were ringed nationally. A total of 74 ringing recoveries and controls (re-trapping of live birds) were recorded between 2008 and 2016. All this accumulating information is proving to be most valuable.
For instance, from the ringing effort in Ireland so far, we know that most young Barn Owls disperse five to about fifty kilometres from their nest site, but occasionally, some will travel much further. The map below shows the ringing recoveries nationally.
Ringing recoveries of Barn Owls in Ireland up to the end of 2015.
However, let’s divert momentarily to a Barn Owl nest site near Firies, in Co. Kerry.
Cottage in Co. Kerry with three nest boxes. The chimney shaft itself was also a suitable nest site, though the owls never used it (M.)’Clery).
Unusually there are three nest boxes here, one inside the cottage, on in the adjacent barn, and one specially adapted to fit on top of the cottage chimney. This was done in 2009 essentially as an experiment, to see if this might ‘improve’ the nest site for Barn Owls (it certainly did), and to see which nest site might be taken up. Sure enough, Barn Owls moved in that winter and nested the following summer, in the chimney box.
Left) The chimney nest box on the cottage in Co. Kerry. Right) One of the four chicks at this nest site in 2015 (M.O’Clery).
This has been one of our most productive nests, producing chicks each year since, even in 2014 when breeding success throughout Ireland was extraordinarily low following a record-breaking cold spring. We have ringed chicks at this site for six years now, but the brood of 2016 – four chicks – was to be particularly remarkable.
John Lusby ringed all four chicks on 10th July 2015, and two were subsequently recovered – remarkable in itself that two out of four would be found again - unfortunately both found dead on major roads. The first was killed along a stretch of the M8 in Co. Tipperary, fully 140 km from the nest site, and the second furthest distance recorded by any Barn Owl in Ireland.
The second was found dead on the dual carriageway on 11th February 2017, just NE of Derry. In a straight line this is a distance of just over 350 km, much the longest distance recorded by an Irish Barn Owl and just about doubling the previous record. Of course, the owl had been capable of flying since the previous August, so the distance travelled would be considerably more, and we have no way of knowing what route it took to get to where it met its’ fate.
Thanks to the monitoring and ringing work undertaken at great effort each summer, we are learning much about Barn Owl life histories including their dispersal patterns, distance travelled, and longevity - all vital knowledge in the future conservation of the species.
And while it was remarkable indeed that we recovered two of the four Barn Owls from this nest, and that two of this brood proved to be such long-distance travellers, there is still the intriguing possibility there might be two more from this brood of 2015 out there. Might we yet encounter more of this remarkable family? Wonder where?
All Barn Owl ringing and photography at the nest sites is carried out under licence to NPWS and the BTO.
