The Darent Valley Barn Owl Project is a partnership project with Kent Wildlife Trust, with Funding provided through the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme from Defra and the Kent Downs National Landscape (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty).

In November 2022 we were awarded a grant and set out to help barn owls in the Darent Valley. We commissioned 8 barn owl nest boxes, built by the Dunton Green Shed Project, to a design provided by the Barn Owl Trust. Kent Wildlife Trust worked with the Darent Valley Farmer Cluster to find suitable sites for the nest boxes, and NWKCP led teams of volunteers to install the boxes. Where the boxes were near livestock troughs, we also installed floats to prevent owls from drowning.

We began monitoring the nest boxes in 2023. We visit each box with a licensed ringer during the breeding season. He rings any birds we find and we share the data with the British Trust for Ornithology, Kent & Medway Biological Records Centre and Barn Owl Trust. These monitoring visits are important because they generate valuable data about movements, breeding success and survival rates, helping us to understand why populations are changing and informing future conservation work. That’s why we are training 4 volunteer apprentices to carry out monitoring work in the future.

When we visited the boxes in June 2024, 2 of them were occupied by breeding owls and another 2 contained pellets or cached prey. This means half our boxes are already being used by owls, which shows how badly needed these nest sites are.

You can see updates from this project, including images from our cellular trail camera, on the DVBOP Facebook page.

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