Looking for the Owl Channel Blog? Click below please for the new location !: hOWLiday Greetings from OCG!12/ 24 to 12/25

Saturday, December 24, 2011

hOWLiday Greetings from OCG!12/ 24 to 12/25

Roy in the Hideout Christmas Eve 2010...Holiday Photo by OCG

Holiday Greetings from OCG!

Hello everyone,

What an exciting Christmas present we got this morning! Roy is spending the holiday with us and giving us such a nice treat. It is amazing to see him in color during the day with the new inside camera. Looking back over the year, the Hideout has come a long way. It started out with a very unstable video stream with no sound. We now have two very nice c...ameras with a stable video stream and filtered sound. We even have a mister for when it gets hot. This was all made possible by the many suggestions and donations by all the moderators, chatters, lurkers and critics.

We have a good number of regular chatters who have found a place to come and share and enjoy. There were many fun times had in the chat this past year and a few sad times. All in all, the experience was priceless. I would like to thank Angowleyez and Tresbien for organizing the wonderful group of moderators we have. We are truly lucky to have such a dedicated, talented and humorous group to moderate the rest of us to keep us in line. Yes, I have been told more than once that I need to behave myself in the chat. We all need a reminder now and then and we are fortunate the mods are on the job.

I would like to thank everyone for all they have done for the Hideout. Thanks to all the moderators for making the chat fun and informative. I truly appreciate what you do for me. Thanks to all the chatters for watching and contributing to the chat room to make things fun and informative too. Thanks to all the lurkers too. Please come in and say hello to the chat if you would like. I know everyone who is there will welcome you with open arms and would love to hear from you. I would especially like to thank those who have made a donation to The Owltlaws now known as The Owl Channel. The donations raised were used to purchase new equipment and to make improvements to the project. There is more work to do, so keep the donations coming.

We have a new year upon us and a new clutch is coming with it. If 2012 is going to be as exciting and unpredictable as this past year we have a lot to look forward to.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

OCG

Dale joins Roy Christmas Eve.. the layered look in feathers ! photo by Sher67

12 barn owl fascinating facts

Discover 12 fascinating facts about the beautiful barn owl.
1 The barn owl was voted Britain’s favourite farmland bird by the public in an RSPB poll in July 2007.
2 Historically, the barn owl was Britain’s most common owl species, but today only one farm in about 75 can boast a barn owl nest.
3 Barn owls screech, not hoot (that’s tawny owls).
4 The barn owl can fly almost silently. This enables it to hear the slightest sounds made by its rodent prey hidden in deep vegetation while it’s flying up to three metres overhead.
5 The barn owl’s heart-shaped face collects sound in the same way as human ears. Its hearing is the most sensitive of any creature tested.
6 Barn owls are non-territorial. Adults live in overlapping home ranges, each one covering approximately 5,000 hectares. That’s a staggering 12,500 acres or 7,100 football pitches!
7 It’s not uncommon for barn owl chicks in the nest to feed each other. This behaviour is incredibly rare in birds.
8 In order to live and breed, a pair of barn owls needs to eat around 5,000 prey items a year. These are mainly field voles, wood mice, and common shrews.
9 Though barn owls are capable of producing three broods of five to seven young each year, most breed only once and produce, on average, only two and a half young. 29 per cent of nests produce no young at all.
10 91 per cent of barn owls post-mortemed were found to contain rat poison. Some owls die as a direct result of consuming rodenticides, but most contain sub-lethal doses. The effects of this remain unknown.
11 In a typical year, around 3,000 juvenile barn owls are killed on Britain’s motorways, dual carriageways and other trunk roads. That’s about a third of all the young that fledge.
12 Everyone can help barn owls. Leave a patch of rough grassland to grow wild thus creating habitat for voles, erect a super-safe deep nest box, volunteer for your local barn owl group, switch to non-toxic rodent control