2. Lodgers

It was the ‘other-worldly’ screeches that alerted me one April morning to the presence of something strange in the garage of our new home. An owl box had been fitted many years earlier, and barn owls were a regular sight, hunting along nearby ditches and verges, but so far all that had shown any interest in the nest box were a couple of amorous wood pigeons and a grey squirrel looking for somewhere to hide his hazel nuts.

From the entrance to the garage it was possible to see the opening on the inner end of the box, and I was sure that that was the source of the sounds. The box had another opening in the gable of the back wall of the garage but, as we eventually discovered, the openings were to two separate compartments, two sort of owl ‘semis’. I decided to investigate further after work that evening.

Once the pots were out of the way after our evening meal, I went into the garden and listened to the usual bird sounds. There were collared doves, a wood pigeon, and a robin, and then that screeching again, repeated every 15 seconds or so. It sound like some poor creature in agony. I approached the garage, not sure what I would find, and looked up into the darkness of the rafters. Something moved in the darkness.

I ran into the house to get a torch and my binoculars, and this time I approached the garage with the stealth of a hunter. I shone the torch up to the opening of the owl box, and there, staring down at me, were two faces. They were pale, heart-shaped faces with large, startled eyes, unmistakably young barn owls! They withdrew into the depths of the box, but over the next hour or so, curiosity, and probably hunger, got the better of them, and they appeared several times more. Sometimes they rocked from side to side, and sometimes just stared vacantly into my torch beam.

The next few weeks provided numerous opportunities for owl watching, with any visitors to the house tiptoeing to the garage to try to catch a glimpse of the comical faces peering out of the box. By far the most exciting views, at any time of the day, were of the parents searching the ditches and field margins for voles, the barn owls main food. A slow, almost languid flight, low over the rough grass, followed by the inevitable brief hover and drop, would signal the start of the dutiful parents’ return with another meal, both of them contributing equally to the task.

Sitting on a garden chair, trying not to be noticed, I would watch through my binoculars as one or other of them approached low over the ripening wheat, the prey now clearly visible in their talons. When they were so close I had no need of binoculars, I would watch as they flew past, just a few metres from my chair, following a regular flight path through a gap in the line of poplar trees and into the hole in the brickwork of the garage wall. From there, I learnt later, they would perch on one of the beams for a few seconds, before taking the offering into the box through the opening in which I had first observed the youngsters.

It was all over by the beginning of June, and working full time meant that I missed some of the most exciting episodes – the fledging, the practice flights, and the feeding of the young in the open. We were able to witness all of this the following summer though, but our owl neighbours were not done with 2001. The screeching started again in July, despite the atrocious weather, but this time there was to be no happy ending.