Where have we found nests so far this season?

This is the latest project map showing records submitted so far using our SurveyMonkey form. If you have a record, whether an incidental find or part of a survey, please click on the link at the bottom of this page.

We’ve used the Ordnance Survey grid system to divide Devon into approximately 90 hectads. A hectad is a 10 x 10km square, and we assign a colour code to these according to whether they have been searched and nests found, or not.

The map above shows where people have looked for nests so far this season. Yellow hectads are areas where at least one nest has been found since October 2023, and red ones are where people have looked, but not yet found any nests. Clear squares have yet to be searched. Often more than one survey or incidental-find will crop up in one hectad, so the green dots show roughly where nests were found and the black squares indicates a nil result.

Knowing that people have looked for nests but not been successful is still really useful. It might be that someone has found nests there on previous years, so not finding any could indicate that habitat management has changed or that the habitat is less favourable than it was (or even as happened earlier this year that breeding barn owls had moved into a box in the field next door) and is really important information. If you look for nests and don’t find any, please still fill out a survey form so that we know.

To submit a record, please click here.