A wildlife photographer's dream!

I've been keeping a bit of a secret from you guys. Well, not so much keeping a secret more, I just haven't been sharing everything. I've not been totally honest. But it's for very good reason. Well, what can I say? We have some catching up to do. It's been two months since I shared anything live from the barn and we have got a story to tell. So grab a coffee if coffee is something you partake in. And as I'm looking out this window, the storms are rolling in, the rains are back. I'll start to tell you the story of the barn for 2026. And what story we have to tell it is a story full of drama, a story full of two different owl species who both successfully raised chicks at the barn together at the same time, fighting, scrapping, falling out of barns, kicked in the face by little owls, potentially loss, harassment from many different bird species. But ultimately, 2026 was another successful year at the barn. I've got so much footage, I've got so many photos that I've been devastatedly excited to share with you. But I've been holding everything back and I've been holding everything back for a good reason. It's been a very special year and I know I have a responsibility to do what I can to protect that barn. And I have, you know, amassed a significant following as a result of sharing photos and sharing videos from that barn and a following that, completely understandably, some of which have found the barn and are motivated to visit the barn, especially if I am sharing the really good stuff. And so I've held this all back until the barn is abandoned again, until the owls have fledged, until the stone barn is just, as it seems, empty. And now everything's gone, I feel comfortable enough that the sharing of this footage will not impact the owls. There'll be no negative connotations, no negative exploitation. I think it's reached a point where I am comfortable to share this now and just settle in because we've got a lot, a lot of story to tell and I'm excited. So enjoy. Before we can go forward, let's just do a little recap of where we are in the season. So, two months ago, I left you with this. Little owls attacking barn owls. Not peregrine falcons. Hobbies attacking barn owls. Those were the two main things that we left on last time. Lots of activity, lots of feeding, but lots of drama between these two. Now I stopped after this because a very special someone came out. There's a little bit of drama involved and this is the footage that I captured the following evening. This is a fledgling barn owl. Okay, this is a young barn owl. You can see by the down feathers. And this barn owl decided that he wanted to come outside the barn on an evening that was particularly windy, which isn't the best idea when you haven't practiced flying outside before. And there's a lot of chaos that unfold and I'll let the footage play for itself because I've never seen any of this before and it was incredible to watch. A little bit scary. Hoping and praying that the juvenile barn owl made it back into the barn. But yeah, I guarantee some of this you would not expect to see ever. Okay, mental, mental, mental, mental footage and that was an evening that I've been dying to share with you for so long. Especially that clip of the kicking the barn owl in the face and the slow-mo flip over. Oh man, I couldn't believe it when I filmed that and then the sheep around the corner. Yeah, so I left the barn owl outside the barn. It was late, it was windy. Nothing you can do in those situations. But I returned the next evening and there he was on a post in the wind. Still very high winds but obviously he had flown around and down and landed on this post and was doing okay. So I wasn't too worried. Now while all that was going on, the little owl was still being feisty and this following evening, amidst the rolling clouds of another wildfire here in the peat district, the reason the little owls were being so feisty became very clear. And there it is, the big secret, the big withholding of information. Now at this point we don't know how many barn owl fledglings there are but we've definitely seen one. We've seen one but we've seen three little owlets. Three little owlets and the past three years of watching this barn there have been little owls there but they've not been at breeding age or reached breeding maturity or for whatever reason they haven't bred. This year immediately I knew there was a shift in behavior and I suspected. The benefit of watching a space like this consistently over the years is you notice little shifts in behavior and little pattern changes and stuff like this and as soon as I started seeing hunting this year I knew I knew something was off and the territorial behavior, the attack in the barn house, this was all suspects, this was all something that I was pretty confident was happening but until this evening, until we started seeing little owlets poking their heads out on top of the fence post and then the climax, the big moment, three little owlets sticking their heads out onto that little post all squished together. This was one of the most joyous nights I've had up at the barn and like I say I've been dying to share this footage with you and I will reiterate now the owls have gone. There are no owls left in this barn or if they are they are not sticking around long or they're just in and out and it's the same as they would be anywhere especially the barn owls. I haven't seen them in a good few days now. They are gone and this is why I didn't share the footage because how exciting how special is that and if I shared it too soon if I compromised this place I would not be able to cope with that so you're seeing it now and you're going to see how it unfolds over the next six weeks, one video a week for the next six weeks ultimately leading up to the successful fledging. Spoiler alert they all fledged, they all lived, they all survived. It was a magical year but there's still more drama to tell and I will be telling it as we go um but yeah there it is the secret's out. Thank you so much for watching, subscribe, hit the like button, do whatever you want to do. I really do appreciate you all being here and sticking with me and yeah I'm excited to show you the rest of this story and just to bring you with me because oh my god what a year it's been.