Little Owls and Jordans Farm on BBC Look East

 

Well this was a total suprise!

 

Colin Shead gave me two hours’ notice that BBC Look East was coming to film at the farm at 11am.Colin keeps tabs on the Owls here and has put up many owl boxes now and taken some beautiful photos.  Turns out he has some contacts, and those contacts had a quiet news day and the general public were sick of the American election which has just been headline news for a few days. Then they found out that we had 7 Little Owls arriving from   Owls and Birds of Prey Rescue Suffolk & Essex – Stephanie Callister-Jarrold
for the pre relesae avairy. Little Owls are clearly the cutest things going adn they were sold! Sean came down and filmed, Colin, myself, the farm, the rewilding field, and then the Owlets arrived. I think he got quite alot of footage of them!
It was a fun and unexpected day. They also published an article with a dreadful photo of me (Yes I can be vain!) here it is if you would like to read it!

BBC Look East Jordans Farm Article 

Enjoy the gallery and the photos of the Little Owls!

Little Owls, so called because they are…… Little! Are about the size of a glass pint bottle of milk…. or let’s just go with a pint of beer.

 

Severn of these absolute heart breakers arrived with Stephanie in their red carry cage and those eyes staring up! We were smitten at first glance and so was the BBC cameraman!

 

Of the seven, six are owlets just a few months old. One is an adult female and was rescued with her chick. As many of you know, normally adults are released back to their territory, especially in the case of Little Owls. However, this adult female ended up mothering all the other chicks as they arrived one by one from all over Essex and Suffolk. The decision was taken by Stephanie to release them all from our prerelease aviary in the hope that the adult bird would continue to look after them and teach the juveniles how to hunt. Remember to date they have been fed by Stephanie and graduated from a dog cage to her outdoor aviaries as they got older and could feed themselves.

 

They are full of character and it’s also impossible to see them all at once once they have been released into the aviary.  If you have seen my social media accounts, you will see that they bob up and down, and if you bob they will copy. It’s brilliant! They are hard to spot in the wild and, of course, numbers are decreasing. They need hollows in old trees in which to nest, a plentiful supply of beetles and worms (so not regularly treated with chemicals), and some nice dense bushes in which to hide. If you do spot them its normally for a moment and you can easily miss them given, they just look like a stubby extension of a branch to our unobservant eyes. They are one of our native Owls and it’s the first time we have had Little Owls in the aviary and it’s an absolute privilege.