Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes- September 24 2008

By 1938 John Walpole-Bond agreed that it may have been so once, but not now. Seventy years on today the idea of barn owls being as numerous as tawny owls is a distant dream. About 100 pairs of barn owls live in East and West Sussex.

Tawny owls, which are also called wood owls and brown owls, are far more common, the exact number unknown. A pair of tawny owls per 50 acres of woodland seems reasonable. Barn owls were once so badly persecuted it is a wonder they survived at all a century ago.

I have an old print of two men in top hats and gaiters, standing in front of a corn barn in some rural backwater of Surrey, holding bet-ween them a dead barn owl. Their flint-locks are cradled in their other arms. The bird is spread wide, held by either wing-tip. The caption to the steel engraving is "Cherubim Shootin".

When you look at the dead owl's face it actually does resemble one of those fat little angels so beloved of Renaissance painters. Why in the name of all that is decent these gents wanted to bring angels to bag is beyond comprehension today. I know Oliver Cromwell's soldiers shot at the angels in the roof of Blythburgh church in Sussex: you can see the bullet holes to this day.

Borrer was fairly incensed a century ago by what was going on around him. He says that 'formerly the barn owl was particularly abundant and bred in the old stone roofed houses, churches, and barns. Though it is the best friend of the farmer, and does little if any harm to game, it is much persecuted, and like the long and short-eared owls, it is sought for in the making of fire-screens'.

What strange things went on in the past. Has anybody seen a barn owl fire screen? Do please send me a picture of one if you have. Today common sense prevails.

Recently, two barn conversions consents were dependent on barn owl nest boxes being included in Sussex.

Many landowners have placed the RSPB designed barn owl nest boxes on their properties. It makes sense, it keeps the rats and mice under control, as managers of Malayan rubber plantations found to their advantage.