Barn Owl Nest Box, Blackdown Hills

Inside a Working Nest Box

The camera looks straight at a purpose-built barn owl box, fixed high beneath the rafters of a traditional barn on a private smallholding. Its weathered timber and scuffed entrance ledge tell the story of a box that has been in continuous use, offering a rare unobtrusive look at how a breeding pair prepares, defends, and returns to the same nesting spot year after year.

Barn Owls of the Blackdown Hills

The box sits within the rolling farmland and hedgerows of the Blackdown Hills in Somerset, a landscape of pasture and rough grassland that is prime hunting ground for silent, low-flying barn owls. Voles and small mammals in the surrounding fields sustain the resident pair as they raise successive broods of owlets in this quiet corner of the English countryside.

A Conservation Partnership

Hosted in partnership with the Somerset Wildlife Trust, the stream lets viewers follow the barn owls' breeding cycle without setting foot near the box, protecting the birds from disturbance. It is part of a wider effort to document and champion one of Britain's most elegant yet vulnerable birds of prey, whose population depends on undisturbed nest sites like this one.