Growing is such hard work....

Barn owls are special. Well, I think they are.

The barn owls in the nest boxes we monitor are having a bumper year - no chicks fledged from six boxes last year, but this year we have five big broods: this is one of them.

They look very cute, and you can see the pale brown flight feathers starting to grow on the biggest ones (to the right). But owls are rotten housekeepers, the 'nest' is just a depression in the bed of droppings and pellets that accumulate in the box and when I take the inspection hatch off, I often recoil at the gout of ammonia that emerges.

We'll hope to see these beauties hunting over the fields in months to come.