PARENT & CHILD
Spring has sprung at Suffolk Owl Sanctuary! Once the chilly winter weather is well and truly behind them, staff at the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary look forward to their busiest time of year - Spring, the season of eggs and babies! Every year, a selection of the sanctuary’s resident birds will produce progeny. Nobody can predict which birds will breed or how many of them, so it is always exciting to watch and wait to see who will sit on eggs! Some owls, like Bug and Beak the Tawny Owls are old hands at raising young and their years of experience dictate that their breeding will have a successful outcome. Other birds may be breeding for the first time, or may just be less diligent about egg care! In both those cases, the falconry team may well have to step in to assist with egg incubation or hand rearing chicks. Owls generally reach maturity at four or five years old, so young first time parents are watched carefully to ensure that eggs are not pushed out of nests or trampled and that newly hatched owlets receive enough food and nurturing. This all makes for a very exciting but very busy period in the work calendar. Great Horned Owls are usually amongst the first of the Sanctuary’s
birds to lay eggs, closely followed by Ural Owls, Tawny Owls and Malaysian Wood Owls. Most of these birds have bred before, so can be left to raise their owlets safely on their own. Most owls incubate their eggs for around 30 days and as they do not lay the whole clutch at the same time, young will hatch over several days. When baby owls are born, they are blind and fluffy… and VERY hungry!! There is no gentle weaning in the owl world - babies want meat immediately! Due to their high protein diet, fed at frequent intervals throughout the day, owls grow incredibly quickly by eight or nine weeks Barn Owlets will have attained adult weight and feathering! Owl admissions into the sanctuary’s raptor hospital also reflect the busy breeding season of the wild owl population. Many young owlets will be found, cold and wet, by members of the public having fallen from trees whilst learning to fly - they “branch out” from the roost before they are
fully competent and often tumble to the ground. The best course of action in these circumstances depends on what kind of owlet is found. A Barn Owl chick - distinguishable by it’s iconic facial disc - will need to be helped back into it’s nest as the parents will only feed the young within the roost and will ignore tumblers! Tawny Owl parents, however, will feed their grounded young and assist them back into the nest using beaks and talons, so the best course of action in that case is to leave well alone. Staff at the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary hope that visitors will have the opportunity to meet some of their new, captive bred owlets within the next few weeks. Flying displays featuring experienced owls and other birds of prey will recommence for the season on Saturday 6th. April - three shows daily will feature different
birds at each outing. The 2019 flying team will include Jack the Hooded Vulture - an iconic bird currently listed as “critically endangered” by conservationists and Tura the Siberian Eagle Owl. Easter weekend will see the return of the popular annual egg hunt around the sanctuary grounds when children find an imitation egg they can swap it for a chocolate one at reception! The sanctuary is open from 10am until 5pm, five days a week and also features a pretty Woodland Walk with red squirrel colony, relaxing sensory garden, children’s play area with wheelchair accessible equipment and tumble safe surface, Meerkat Kastle and a unique owlie gift shop. Free parking and restaurant available on site. Further details on 0345 680 7897 or visit www.owl-help.org.uk
What are your children looking at on the Web? A survey of parents on the online activity of their children has found that 65% of mums and dads allow their kids under 10 to use the internet unsupervised. Meanwhile, parents said their biggest concern about their children’s connected lives is too much time spent online, with 40% of parents saying their kids connect to the internet before saying good morning each day. Tellingly, a considerable number of parents - 76% - would like to know more about what their children do online. A vast majority of parents (90%) say they do monitor what their youngsters get up to online, with the most popular methods of doing this being a check on their kids’ internet browser (30%) and specifically looking at their search history (21%). Only 21% of parents ask their children what they have been doing online, 12% choose to physically observe what their offspring are up to and 5% go as far as reading their children’s private messages. When they were asked ‘At what age did your children first start using the internet on their own?’ a notable 26% said it was a young as just five, or less. For 39% of parents it was 6-9 years-old and for a more conservative 35% it was aged 10 or older. Regarding their biggest worries about their children’s connected lives by far the main concern is too much time spent online (31%), followed by viewing adult content (20%), being upset by content (10%), grooming (9%), bullying (8%) and use of their kids’ data by big companies (6%). The survey of 300 parents around the world was conducted by UK based internet safety and privacy specialists B9 Systems. B9 also quizzed parents as to how they protect their children online, with the most popular answer being simply talking with their children (27%) about the potential downsides of the online world. A close second was limiting kids’ to specific time online (26%), whilst just 13% of parents said the main control for their kids’ internet safety is through software. Only 9% of parents rely on a family agreement as the main form of control. www.b9s.net 16