Barn Owl question / High Flyer note (1 Viewer)

This is my first year of studying Barn Owls, having switched from 20 years "on & off" on Leo's, so have several questions.

Q:How long after fledging are the young dependent on:-
the parents
the nest cavity / site

Q:Will the eldest/most advanced fledgling follow the adults out on hunting trips before its siblings are able to?

Q:If BO's can breed at 1 year old, then at what stage are they ousted from the parents territory? (ive read they only generally go 20km in first year?)

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We have an excellent raised vantage point on an escarpment here & have watched with some amusement as we've tracked the adults fly through streets & gardens, even between gable ends of semi-detached houses(!) to get to favoured feeding areas.

On several occasions the adults have caught prey early in the evening & imediately spiraled up to great heights, before making a bee-line for the nest site in a quarry adjacent to our elevated watchpoint. (1,600 linear metres between nest & hunting ground)
We presume this is a strategy to avoid being mobbed / robbed of prey items during daylight conditions, as when dusk arrives the birds fly in low in a more "regular fashion", even coming in over the gates of the quarry entrance.

Using the heights above see level of the watchpoint & the hunting site, its been worked out that birds were travelling back at well in excess of 260 feet above the meadows....:eek!:
We all commented on how many times we must have had one of our local BO's flew over our heads unseen!

Cheers
Steve

StevieEvans said:

On several occasions the adults have caught prey early in the evening & imediately spiraled up to great heights, before making a bee-line for the nest site in a quarry adjacent to our elevated watchpoint. (1,600 linear metres between nest & hunting ground)
We presume this is a strategy to avoid being mobbed / robbed of prey items during daylight conditions, as when dusk arrives the birds fly in low in a more "regular fashion", even coming in over the gates of the quarry entrance.

Using the heights above see level of the watchpoint & the hunting site, its been worked out that birds were travelling back at well in excess of 260 feet above the meadows....:eek!:
We all commented on how many times we must have had one of our local BO's flew over our heads unseen!

Click to expand...

Very interesting. Another reason I suppose for high flight under these circumstances is to avoid disclosing the location of the nest to predators.

i have started studying barn owls this year as well i have round about 200 sites of breeding pairs.

i have that the chicks have stayed in the nest site til around sept/oct then like the adults the territory size has been increased so the chicks that fledged will have go further for food and will be kicked out of the nest site by the adults.

The part about the fledged chicks going 20km is what i thought before i started looking into it seems actually they go alot further to make their own territory depending on population around the nest site, on my study they are going 40km and actually 1 that went 72mile!!!

i have learnt alot about these owls just this year i have been ringing alot of chicks and adults to look at movement of them and also is it same adults every year or does a new pair come into that site.

i am also trying set up a little owl, long eared owl and get the short eared owls nesting montiored as all my information goes to local raptor group, BTO and barn owl trust also local record centre and SNH.