Well, ‘Owl’ be darned…

Words and pictures by William Bowell

We live in an area blessed with owls, particularly our adored Barn Owls. They are a regular sight across our fenland landscape, and in a good vole year, they could almost be considered common. But when is a Barn Owl not just a Barn Owl?

The Dark-breasted Barn Owl (Tyto alba guttata), a central European subspecies, is a rare visitor to Britain. I’ve been on the lookout for guttata among our alba Barn Owls (if you’ll allow me to use their Latin subspecies names, dear reader) since I was a teenager. In the early 2000s, a Dark-breasted Barn Owl was reportedly found in Norfolk. Naively, I thought they might simply be overlooked. Given how many Barn Owls we have in our area, surely I’d stumble upon one eventually.

As it turns out, that particular Norfolk individual wasn’t a Dark-breasted Barn Owl after all, and they are, in fact, exceedingly rare. So, I’ve never had such luck – until recently. In early March, while checking local social media birding groups, I came across photos taken in ‘south Lincolnshire’ of a Barn Owl that looked as if it was wearing mascara! Could this be a Dark-breasted Barn Owl?