Week Nine – Barn Owls

Bill and the team head for a barn in Devon that's been used by barn owls for hundreds of years. It's on the verge of collapse and too expensive to repair.

Barn owls are among the UK's most beautiful and iconic birds, but their numbers have declined since agriculture became a high-tech practice. Traditional farm barns, where the birds prefer to nest, have gradually disappeared through neglect and collapse or conversion into human dwellings.

Barn owls are very particular about their nesting sites, which are used by generation after generation. Building height and access are crucial factors in determining whether owls will use a site. The Wild Thing team discovers that no other barns in the area are suitable.

Worse still, the discovery of a dead owlet in the existing barn indicates that the owls are struggling to survive in this location anyway. The scale of the job grows as the team decides to undertake some habitat improvement to boost the number of animals that make barn owl breakfast.

Improving the habitat clearly won't help though unless the nesting site problem is solved. The team chooses to construct a purpose-built barn owl refuge close to the existing barn. But it's a radical solution. There are only two other barn owl refuges in the UK and they've had limited success. But Bill and the team are never to be defeated!

See the story in pictures in the gallery.