Native owls are battling for dwindling tree hollows across the Highlands but one man from Tain has made it his mission to help by building as many nesting boxes as he can for homeless birds.
Bob Swann is a keen birder who builds the boxes in his garage for homeless owls because good-quality nest sites are disappearing.
Some 40 boxes are already high up in trees and Bob is now catering for rising demand.
“When I put a box up the owls are sometimes moving straight into it,” he said. “They’re quite desperate for good, safe sites.”
Bit of good news for a change. 18 of my Tawny Owl boxes near Tain were occupied this year. Amazingly all have been successful (1st time ever) with a total of 30 chicks fledging. At 1.7 chicks per box this is above the long term average of 1.4 pic.twitter.com/p5fNeREj0J
— Bob Swann (@SwannBob) June 17, 2022
Why owls need Bob’s nesting boxes
The future of tawny owls is dependent on old trees with holes deep enough to nest in but those are thinning out.
Mature woods are coming down for housing estates and big old trees are being felled because people are afraid they might topple in a storm or drop branches and hurt someone.
“Tawny owls in particular need our help,” said Bob.
“They want an old tree with a hole in it, but we don’t have many more of those left in the woods around here because they have all been cut down.”
Barn owls also need Bob’s bird nesting boxes because the old farm buildings they like to nest in are gradually coming down.
Build and they will come
That is why Bob builds two kinds of nesting boxes in his garage – he hangs the smaller one measuring 30 x 30 x 75cms up in trees for tawny owls and he places the bigger ones, for barn owls, measuring 45 x 45 x 75cms in derelict farm buildings.
The retired geography teacher started his bird box building programme more than 30 years ago when he was running a bird club for his pupils at Tain Royal Academy.
Unwanted wood planks donated by the Norbord factory at Dalcross were sliced and diced by the school’s techie department and pupils used the trims to make bird boxes at lunchtime.
“They loved it,” said Bob. “They would make the boxes and write to landowners to get all the permissions to put them up and then we’d go round monitoring the boxes to see how the owls were doing.”
But one day an owl taught Bob a lesson – a rare incident but Bob has worn goggles and a hat while nest checking ever since.
“On one famous occasion I was there with the kids at lunchtime checking boxes and an owl hit me on the side of head and cut my ear with its needle-sharp claws,” he said.
“There was blood all over the place – my blood not the owl’s blood – and I had to go back into school looking like I’d been in some sort of battle.”
It’s not the only time Bob’s had a shock when checking in on the bird boxes.
Earlier this year a cheeky pine martin family made themselves at home and was none too impressed when Bob disrupted them.
I don't think the owls will be using this box this summer. pic.twitter.com/0FB8dD3fPQ
— Bob Swann (@SwannBob) April 7, 2022
Why owl nesting boxes help turn the tide on habitat loss
Bob monitors all kinds of birds including owls around Easter Ross, Sutherland and Caithness, and he gives this information to the British Trust for Ornithology and the RSPB.
And today, August 4, when the world celebrates International Owl Awareness Day Bob has pretty good news.
He says tawny owl numbers are doing “pretty well in the area” which is positive as numbers are causing concern elsewhere.
Barn owl numbers are also up in the Highlands “quite dramatically since I started looking at them in 1990,” he said.
Climate change, Bob observes, is playing its part with many more owls surviving through the winter due to the milder temperatures and the species is spreading as far as the north coast of Sutherland and up into the hills.
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