Barn owls (Tyto alba) suffered their worst year on record in 2013. Results from barn owl monitoring schemes around the UK revealed the number of sites where nesting took place last year was significantly down in every area compared to previous years, and some surveys found no nests with eggs in at all. Overall the number of occupied nests was down 71% on the average across all previous years, according to the Barn Owl Trust, which collated the information from 21 independent groups stretching from Jersey in the Channel Islands to south-west Scotland. A survey in Berkshire which normally finds 14 nests in use and a surveyor in Yorkshire who normally finds 25-30 occupied nests both found none at all, while surveys in Buckinghamshire and Sussex were both down more than 90% on normal levels. Conservationists described the situation as the "worst year ever recorded" for the flagship farmland species. Almost four times as many dead barn owls were reported to the British Trust for Ornithologyin March 2013 than normal and by mid-April it was possible that there were fewer barn owls alive in the UK than at any time since records began, the report said.
Source: The Guardian, 24 April 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/24/barn-owls-suffer-wor…
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