GEL helps home barn owls by reusing street lamp poles
A LARGE family of owls living in a field in St Peter’s now enjoy a sky-high view of the parish following a donation of recycled street lights for their tree top home from Guernsey Electricity.
When local resident Chris Atkinson and his family purchased a field behind their garden an old owl box came with it and soon they discovered, during lockdown, that it contained two adult barn owls, along with their four boisterous young owlets.
Following this, Mr Atkinson consulted local conservationist Vic Froome, who advised him to install additional boxes as the original home would soon be too small for the family of six.
He bought three new boxes, but then needed a way to install them about 12ft off the ground for the owls in his field, so he turned to Guernsey Electricity, which was only too happy to help and provided the poles to do so.
Guernsey Electricity operations director Sally-Ann David said the company was delighted to supply and help install three galvanised poles which were previously used for street lighting.
‘We had a limited number of unusable street lights so this was an ideal opportunity to recycle them and help Chris and his family of owls,’ she said.
‘As a company, we are very aware of our responsibilities for the environment, including biodiversity, and have been very involved with the States in putting together the recently-announced 2020 Strategy for Nature.’
The boxes were installed in mid-July, with Guernsey Electricity engineers drilling four bolt holes in each pole to fix the owl boxes in place.
