Living the High Life at Goodwood…

Russell and I met outside the Forestry Office on The Goodwood Estate at 6am to starton the highest boxes on the estate with the help of the trusty landrover cherry picker conversion. This amazing piece of machinery expertly handled by Russell can lift us up into the canopy of the tallest trees on the Estate.

It was 18 degrees already when we set out and by the time we finished at 11.15am it was already in the high 20’s. On eof the advantages of the cherry picker is that birds can be ringed in the “cage” which makes the process very slick.

The majority of the boxes we checked today are impssible to access even with triple ladders.

Last year Sophia (Goodwood Sustainability Officer) purchased some recycled tyre boxes and these have been placed around the Estate. Today we found our first breeding Tawny Owl with a newly hatched owlet and an egg near the Goodwood Art Foundation. We quickly retreated and left her in peace and hope to revisit the nest in a couple of weeks to ring her owlets.

Tawny Owl with owlet and an egg

In the beautiful Rewilding Area we checked 3 boxes , one in need of repair, an empty kestrel box but in a fabulous Oak Tree we found this young family. Three out of four owlets were ringed but the smallest one was too tiny to ring. We hope to see them quartering and spreading their wings in the future.

Family of owlets in a nest box

A particularly productive box in a Walnut Tree, which yielded 7 young in 2024 seemed very quiet when we took the cherry picker almost to its limit. I put a stopper in the entrance hole and didn’t hold much hope for any owls. I put my camera into the entrance hole to see if there was anything going on and I caught sight of two very relaxed adult owls with their impressive clutch of 6 eggs. We quietly backed away and plan to revisit the box in the near future.

Barn Owls with eggs.

I retreated back to my NHS work at 11.30am with a promise to return to check some more boxes which are new for the Estate and to revisit in the next few weeks to do further nest monitoring.

Thanks to Darren, Russell and all the Forestry Team for their hard work and continued committment to the Owls.