Hi, I’m Paul David and I’m a hobby photographer living in the beautiful Peak District in England.

Our lovely home is an old farm with a little bit of land and although we don’t have any livestock on it, the natural habitat means we get a wide variety of wildlife and the majority of my photographs are actually taken in our backyard, so to speak. 

I’ve observed both Barn Owls and Tawnies in a couple of our fields, so I’ve made it my mission to get them to adopt it as their home as well as ours.  Fingers crossed, I’m hoping to attract a breeding pair that will nest and have some chicks here.

Having spent more or less a lifetime in CCTV, I’m well equipped and skilled to install CCTV cameras in some owl boxes, so I’ve done just that.

I’ve got a couple of old Barn Owls boxes up and a couple of new ones that I’ve made. 

The new ones that I’ve made are designed to be as appealing as possible to the Barn Owl to use as a roost and hopefully nest in. I’ve made these new boxes out of some old oak whisky barrels so they are a des-res for the owl. Warm, dry and solid, they offer a higher perch for the Male to view out of and a lower, safer nesting chamber for the chicks. 

Whilst I’ve read up on the barn owl behaviour this is to some degree still an experiment for me, and if it is successful, I will publish the plans so you can build your own owl box out of a barrel.

The good news to date is that the barrel has definitely been liked as a roost as I’ve got a male Barn Owl called Banjo who is using it around 5 days out of 7 as a roost. I’m just hoping he brings a female back to nest in it. Banjo can be seen on my live feed under CAMERA2. He pretty much sleeps and grooms in the day and hunts all night so log on to the feed say between 9-5 PM to try and see him.

In an older box that I put up a few years ago since I installed a camera, I’ve attracted another barn owl called Bella. Bella looks like a female, but her markings aren’t too conclusive so only time will tell to her/his sex. I did catch Banjo visiting Bellas’s box, and it was a tense moment Banjo pretty much evicted Bella, but she came back the next day, and so did Banjo to their respective roosts. As Barn Owls are quite territorial, it still indicates that they may be male and female, but there is little love between them currently. 

To see Bella on my live feed, switch to CAMERA1.  Since her arrival, Bella has been ultra-reliable and has made this her exclusive roost 7 days a week. Like Banjo, she hunts all night and spends the daylight hours in her roost grooming and sleeping. In heavy rain, she pops out at night when it eases off and brings back a vole to “Eat-in” I’ve posted some footage of one such incident I caught on the camera.

I hope you enjoy the live feeds. 

I’m in the process of setting up a tawny owl box too, so watch this space.

If you want to be automatically updated when an owl is in the box, please subscribe to my “Owl in Box Notifier List.”

To see my Wildlife photographs, have a look at my PeakyWildlfe Instagram account. For frequent videos and news from the BarnOwl boxes, I’ve created a new Instagram account called @BarnOwl.Live. Pop along to Instagram and say hi.

Paul