Europe’s oldest recorded barn owl, ringed in Collingham, found breeding in Hough on the Hill
Conservationists are hooting for joy after Europe’s oldest recorded barn owl was found to still be breeding in a Lincolnshire village.
Hough on the Hill’s Eastfield Farm owns several owl boxes, built and installed by owner John Lord, and his grandson Ben Lord is responsible for their upkeep and for monitoring the owl population within them.
The village’s Neighbourhood Plan 2014-2026 had seen all of the barn owls that have been reared in its owl boxes over the last five years tagged, with a total of 48 chicks tagged to date.
Alan Ball, from Sleaford, has been ringing wild birds for more than 40 years and runs the owl survey here in Lincolnshire on behalf of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), and when he visited the farm to conduct its annual barn owl survey on June 25, found seven chicks and four adults.
One of the adults, a female, was ringed as a chick in Collingham, near Newark, on June 23, 2007, making the bird 18 years old. She is still breeding and has a six-week-old chick.
The previous oldest barn owl was recorded as being 15 years and seven months old in 2023, and new data yet to be released by the BTO records that this was broken by a 17-year-old barn owl, found in Frampton Marsh near Boston last year.
This owl in Eastfield Farm has now been recorded as the oldest living barn owl not only in the UK, but in Europe. As the average life span of a barn owl is just four years, this female is an incredibly significant owl, and both the mother and chick were said to be healthy.
Ben said: “It’s quite an achievement for little Hough on the Hill, and especially as it hasn’t been a great year for owls as their food source has suffered because of the weather.”
Alan said that it was “unheard of” for an owl to live to this age, let alone to still be breeding.
Barn owls are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which means it is illegal to kill, injure or take any wild bird, take, damage or destroy the nest or eggs of any wild bird while that nest is in use or being built.
BTO volunteers, who must be licensed to check nest boxes, will ring the chicks between the ages of three to seven weeks.
Barn owls, Alan said, tend to live within 5-6km of where they fledged, and when they are fully fledged at around seven months old they will rarely move territory.
“Lincolnshire is the best in the country for barn owl populations,” Alan added, “All of our open farm land and our nest box schemes have worked wonders, and owl numbers in Lincolnshire have risen from 200 pairs to between 1,200 and 1,500 pairs over the past 40 years.”