We are now half way through the tawny incubation and the male is working hard to feed the female, bringing between 1 -4 prey items every 24hr period. At present, the majority of prey is wood mice, with a few voles and quite a lot of rats this week.
Last weekend we had another covering of snow and, once again, the male tawny was using the Owl Mansion as a daytime roost.
I was also excited to have captured a daytime clip of the owl with prey. I think it may be a pied wagtail. This was at 7.30am.
There are always plenty of rodents on site and the rats have been featuring increasingly in the prey brought in. This time, the male brought in just half of a large rat. I presume he ate some of it himself. Even this half proved to be quite difficult to swallow!
Even in better weather, the male tawny was enjoying the Owl Mansion, taking full advantage of the sunny decking area….
I am thrilled that we have an owl using this space… even if we were hoping for a barn owl!
I really wanted to see if I could get some Bushnell footage. This would mean getting a trail cam up on the box somehow. I thought I could make a long arm to set the camera about 3 metres from the entrance. The issue with this would be reaching the Bushnell at the end of the arm. I decided to create a slider so I could slide the arm in, to mount the Bushnell and then push it out. This proved to be a lot harder than I thought, as it is quite high and the decking juts out, making it hard to work over the overhang.
I used the Bushnell Live View, which meant I could plug in the viewing screen, move the arm out and be able to see where the camera was pointing. The only issue I might have is if it is windy, the arm will wiggle, triggering the camera… worth a try though! We will see what we can capture over the coming week and if I could get shots of him sitting out there in daylight, I’ll be very pleased!
On a different note, after several months of absence, the female kingfisher appeared last week and, this week, the male was back on the scene… great news. Let’s hope we see a lot more of these two over the coming months.
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