Having decided to leave the kingfishers to their own devices for the time being, perhaps it was time for me to catch up with more dependable old friends - in particular, a Barn Owl that hunts within a few miles of home. I first spotted him a couple of years ago when I was travelling on a bus to work. He was quartering a field of rough grass and scrub, and, rather thrillingly, flew alongside the bus for fifty yards or so. Sure enough, I went back to the same spot a few days later and, bang on schedule, he emerged from the north, following the line of a ditch and hunted over the same ground for about twenty minutes. I haven't visited this place since last autumn though.
No matter how many times I see a Barn Owl, I always marvel at how silent the birds are in flight. However, when I visited his hunting ground a few days ago, it was all too silent. I have read recently* that the past two winters have accounted for a decrease of probably 70 or 80% of Barn Owl numbers. The prolonged cold spell and snow covering the ground would have made life especially difficult for owls that depend heavily on catching small mammals, such as voles and mice. I can only conclude that my local owl succumbed to the cold and starvation during December, when the weather was at its most inclement.
Feeling slightly deflated, then, I wondered what to do with the rest of my morning. I had heard that a few miles away there was a local stronghold for water voles, another species that is in decline, but for sharply contrasting reasons. Habitat loss and predation by mink has seen a decline of around 95% in the water voles' range in the last one hundred years, according to a study by the Wildlife Trusts. In Oxfordshire, in my experience, this means that populations only seem to occur in small pockets, scattered across the county. Certainly, I have not seen a water vole along my local stretch of the Thames. So, it was more in hope than expectation that I set off.
Rather surprisingly, though, almost the first stretch of river that I chose produced a bold and rather entertaining water vole. He swam and fed within view for a good hour. The edited highlights are available to view below. Once again, the local wildlife had not failed to surprise or delight.
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