ナショナルジオグラフィックのインスタグラム(natgeo) - 6月19日 10時00分

Photograph by David Chancellor @chancellordavid - barn owl chick, Invermark, Cairngorm National Park, Scotland- on our rounds today we found this little guy had fallen out of one of the nest boxes, he’s now back with his 5 siblings. I’ll be watching them grow and then fledge over coming weeks. You can just see the characteristic heart shaped face, and the flight feathers underneath the fluffy down which helps them keep warm, and therefore allows the female to leave the nest and help the male with hunting duties. The barn owl is nocturnal over most of its range, but in Britain and some Pacific islands, it also hunts by day. Barn owls specialise in hunting animals on the ground and nearly all of their food consists of small mammals which they locate by sound. They mate for life unless one of the pair is killed, when a new pair bond may be formed. Breeding takes place at varying times of year according to locality, with a clutch, averaging about four eggs, being laid in a nest in a hollow tree, old building or fissure in a cliff. Most bird species don’t start to incubate their eggs until the clutch is complete, so the eggs hatch at more or less the same time. But Barn Owls begin incubation as soon as the first egg is laid and lay additional eggs over a period of around 8-21 days. After 31-32 days’ incubation, the eggs hatch every 2-3 days, usually in the order they were laid. This is termed “asynchronous” hatching. The age difference between the oldest and youngest nestlings can be as much as three weeks. This age variation serves to reduce the peak in food demand and spread it over a longer period. The female does all the incubation and the male provides all the food until the young are around 3 weeks old which is roughly the age of this owlet. Barn owls do not strictly speaking build a nest but rather lay their eggs onto the previous years nest debris, a compacted layer of owl pellets, having nest boxes distributed around the Estate always the owls to return the same site and the estate is therefore more easily able to monitor the health of populations - To see more from this wild and wonderful landscape follow me here @chancellordavid @thephotosociety

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