UK Nature and Environment

424 readers

45 users here now

General Instance Rules:

No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
Do not spam or abuse network features.

Community Specific Rules:

Keep posts UK-specific. There are other places on Lemmy to post articles which relate to global environmental issues (e.g. slrpnk.net).
Keep comments in English so that they can be appropriately moderated.

Note: Our temporary logo is from The Wildlife Trusts. We are not officially associated with them.

Our winter banner is a shot of Shotley marshes, Suffolk by GreyShuck.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Barn owls: A bird's-eye view inside nest on Strangford farm, N. Ireland (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

1 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A County Down farmer is celebrating the arrival of four new barn owl chicks after 10 years of conservation work on his land to increase numbers.

There are currently fewer than 30 breeding pairs of barn owls in Northern Ireland.

Ulster Wildlife say this is down to agricultural intensification, habitat loss, a lack of nest sites, and increased use of rat poisons.

David Sandford has provided a home for nearly 20 owlets in the past six years after installing wooden nest boxes on his farm in Strangford.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I think I did a post not too long ago about these people. What I think this story best highlights is that it really takes minimal effort to achieve important results, people just actually need to do it.

He put up some owl boxes, and made nice areas for the owl's food to live too. It was land that wasn't useful for anything for people, and now it is bringing back the owls.

The owls need a good supply of rodents, such as wood mice, field mice, and shrews.

He has turned parts of the land that are not being used for arable farming into wild bird cover with rough grass areas to allow these types of animals to thrive.

Getting neighbors to stop using poison will be the big challenge. Poisoned animals are easy to catch as they succumb to the effects, and are taken back to be shared with the nest. They're also eaten by pets and other wild animals, killing them all very painfully. Poisoning is terrible and should be stopped.