Barn owl (Tyto alba) catching voles

At the end of October, we received another 6 young barn owls from the second nest. Because the population of common voles has collapsed this year, we are buying mice for owls for the money you kindly send them. However, owls have a great appetite, which is why we also improve their common voles, which we still occasionally manage to discover and catch. Not far from Dobříš, we discovered a field with alfalfa, where some of the voles still live.
So you can see with us how such voles hunt. First, we draw water from a nearby pond into all the possible containers we have. We will take them to the fields and bring them to the inhabited vole burrows. You will be searched by our best tracker Víťa according to the stay in the burrows and their surroundings. Then we pour a lot of water into these selected holes. After a complex of holes, sometimes very large, are washed out, the voles flee to the surface. At this moment, hunting instincts are waking up in all around, and the voles have no chance. The young hunters and their observation proved to be of great benefit. However, even the older and seasoned hunters did not lag behind and replaced the agility of the youth with experience. The water consumption in this type of hunting is high, so we had to go for water once again. During this hunt, about 50 common voles were caught.
We had a good time and the children enjoyed a little fun and exercise with us. We were also warmed by the feeling of a job well done and the knowledge that the owls we prepare their most common and natural food will have a much better chance of surviving in the wild.

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Díky 🙂