One of my most memorable birding moments involved a Barn Owl in Northumberland. In the early Nineties on winter nights I would often drive up to the area around Lynemouth Power Station and the Alcan Plant at night.
It was a reliable site for hunting Barn Owl and offered a sizeable area of rough grassland that was well lit at night by all the floodlights. The floodlights were key as it meant you could use optical equipment that was otherwise useless at night, remember in those days the only people with Night Vision were the SAS.
I had been watching a Barn Owl for several minutes and was crouched at the end of a small stand of pines. The owl was sat on a post about 50m away. I think it must have caught sight of my binoculars moving or a light reflection as it swept into the air and came gliding silently toward me. I kept refocusing my bins as it got closer and closer till it was so close it became a blur. I took the bins from my eyes as the Barn Owl hovered above me, presumably trying to work out if I was possible prey. It was so close if I had reached up I probably could have touched it. After a few seconds it banked and with a few silent flaps was gone.
The Barn Owl population in Northumberland is doing well with over one hundred breeding pairs. Unusually there have been many sightings of daylight hunting Barn Owls over the past few weeks from many areas across the region. There are a number of theories why this may be happening, although it is likely to be from a lack of voles, their main food, or they may be affected by repeated heavy rain during the night, their usual hunting period. Unfortunately if they are struggling to catch enough voles it will result in reduced clutch sizes and less young in the coming breeding season.
Cresswell in Northumberland and Saltholme on Teeside seem to be the most reliable sites to catch a glimpse of this beautiful bird at the moment, early morning or late afternoon the best times. Other locations with regular daylight hunting birds include Hipsburn and Boldon.