When The Old Willow Works was restored in 2011, RSPB volunteer and Beckingham History Group member Chris duFeu, thought that it would be a good idea to provide nest boxes for the barn owls that had previously bred in the building . Therefore, the talents of local builder Michael Rennison were employed to build and install the boxes - one at either end of the building.
I've never been lucky enough to see barn owls in the Beckingham area. However, Chris assured me that they were around, as he had recently found numerous owl pellets when inspecting one of the boxes.
Motion-sensitive cameras were installed in the boxes earlier this year and connected to a plasma screen in the Willow Works conference room. The first time that I turned them on revealed only a lonely stock dove in one of the them. However, when I turned them on again this week, I was amazed to see two barn owls roosting in one of them, along with the aforementioned stock dove!
The image below is just a record shot taken with my phone, but we will have better images recorded using the nestbox camera to follow.