There is something comforting yet quizzical about the face. Eamon de Buitlear in Ireland's Wild Countryside tells us that its name in Irish is an screachog, meaning the screecher, though in its roost it is just as likely to be heard making a peaceful snoring noise. It is also, he tells us known as an ceann cat - and you could see a similarity there. It is, of course, the barn owl, that lovely, ghostly presence which, if you meet it at all, is likely to be at night or dusk. If you are in a car, it may fly over you as you pass under trees, perhaps, or perhaps not, using your headlights as an aid to its hunting. The white underside, the slowly-flapping wings, as it appears, though it can make a good speed, is somehow comforting. You may have been some help to it. Unfortunately, this most impressive bird is in serious decline in this country. Not so long ago it was calculated that there were approximately 600 to 900 pairs, mostly found south of a line from Galway to Dundalk, and largely in the eastern parts. A survey, writes David Cabot, in his latest book Ireland: a Natural History, "conducted with the assistance of the public during 1995-7 revealed only 130 nest/roost sites, most of which were below the 100m contour. The greatest concentrations of owls were in counties Kilkenny and Cork."
Examination of pellets regurgitated by these birds reveal that mice and rats form the principal prey. A useful ally of the farmer. But farmyards have been spruced up and reorganised. There may be no place for nesting. And the sort of rough grassland that suits the prowler is less and less common. Over in England there has been controversy about this. Some weeks ago David Tomlinson wrote an article "For Rat Poison Read Owl Poison". This was in Country Life magazine. Rats, he argued were now becoming resistant to poisons, more likely to be weakened rather than killed by rodenticides and thus are accumulating more poison within their bodies. The result is that they are far more toxic to predators. Post mortems on more than 700 barn owls found dead throughout Britain from 1983-4 to 1995-96 showed that the proportion of the birds with anti-coagulant rodenticides in their liver increased from 5 per cent to 36 per cent.
Yet a reply from Mr Colin Shawyer has some reassurance. Two projects which he co-supervised show that after 50 years of population decline, numbers in some areas have stabilised. They do need more rough grassland habitats and nest sites provided. More on another day about this beautiful creature. Y