From LEAF Farmer Duncan Farrington
September Newsletter
‘Plop’ the barn owl in our daughters’ bedtime story this evening gave me inspiration for this month’s article.
Last weekend was the first time for many weeks that I was at home for a weekend, following harvest and endless trade shows for Farrington Oils. When your four year old daughter starts asking when daddy is going to have a day off, it is time to stop and listen.
It was a lovely bright, warm autumn morning so we went for a walk around the farm. Whilst on the walk a barn owl flew out of the hedge in front of us, a sight which is really quite special, as this wonderful creature moves so gracefully through the air in almost complete silence. Unlike many wild animals, they never seem startled by humans; no doubt they know we are approaching long before we notice them. Recently as I was walking the dog at dusk one evening, an owl circled over me out of curiosity, before then circling over the dog for some time. I think he was seeing if Ollie would disturb any vowels or the like for his super that night. Either that or he thought Ollie looked rather tasty, but decided he was a just a bit too big.
We have a few resident barn owls around the farm. This has no doubt been helped by the two owl boxes we put up, with one in particular being a regular penthouse pad for someone, evidenced by the mass of owl pellets underneath it. This is a great story for our LEAF visits, as it allows me to talk about how wildlife and farming fit together in a complete system. The owls live in the barns, and the luxury boxes, they hunt in the fields and grassy areas around them, brining the prey back to feed to their young. On one occasion when showing a group of children the array of pellets on the floor, one of their fathers started eagerly examining and dissecting a pellet. He turned out to be a doctor, and was able to reveal rib and pelvis bones of the small creature, regurgitated from a recent meal. This was a fantastic chance for us all to learn something.
I keep promising myself that we will erect more owl boxes at some stage, but as yet I have not found time. The barn owl is just one of the many bird species we regularly see on the farm, each of them preferring different habitats farms can offer. Some like the shelter of tall thick hedges, others such as the Linnet prefer small scrubby hedges. Whilst the Kingfisher prefers streams, or the Lapwing and Skylark thrive on large open fields, whereas Turtle Doves like small copses and spinneys. Whatever we may pass when strolling along a footpath, these different habitats and the wildlife that lives in them, certainly makes the British countryside something for us all to enjoy and be proud of.
As for Plop the young Barn owl, he was afraid of the dark, but after his mother suggested he talked to the boys and girls around him to get their thoughts on it, he soon realised that the dark, and the world around him was actually a pretty fine place to be.
