Our barn owls are back
Sharon Vincent posted on our Facebook page:
Sharon Vincent: Thought you might like to know we saw a barn owl flying across the Village Green field at about 11am this morning. No photo as I was so excited I forgot to grab my phone, & it was gone quite quickly!
Southwick Country Park: Thanks for telling us. There have been a pair of barn owls in the park at this time for the last couple of years; they roost in the oak tree in the fields on the other side of the Lambrok, where developers are planning to build 50 houses. Every year, we hope the owls will nest but they move on after two or three weeks.
Sharon Vincent: Hopefully this will be the year. I was so blown away by seeing it, never seen one in the wild before. I will keep a lookout when walking again.
Southwick Country Park: We had been planning to refurbish our owl boxes this year but lockdown put paid to that. We have lots of old oak trees and hopefully there is one with a hole that this pair of owls might find suitable. Barn owl chicks would be wonderful.
Header picture: Barn owl by Peter K Burian (CC BY 4.0) wikimedia.org
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 
Such beautiful birds, I hope they do find somewhere to breed!
This is the third year they have been reported. I wish we had been able to get owl boxes properly refurbished but we DO have our fair share of old oaks.