26th July - sunny intervals, mostly cloudy, warm 22C, breeze SW

Not too much time today, however this  morning I did explore the large round hay bales that were due to be moved from the field - the reason being that these bales provide good sites for Owls to sit at night while hunting and can often Owl pellets can be found.

About 10 pellets were found, but of which species?  The pellets were about 2 cm long max and 0.5 cm wide, the ends were generally pointed.  An initial examination showed them to consist of vegetable matter and beetle remains, no mammal bones etc.   This suggest Little Owl, but can not completely rule out Tawny.  tawny Owl pellets are usually larger and more square ended, but not as large as a Barn Owl pellet - which is the large pellet in the photo below.

I know Tawny Owl are in this area but have not seen a Little Owl, although I did find another suitable pellet about 3 weeks ago on a gate post.

Some of the small Little Owl pellets were quite red in colour and contained stones, these I think are cherries.  Now, where there is a Cherry tree near the hay field I don't know, so need to do more detective work to solve this mystery.