[witham]

There used to be another barn owl in our area which we saw regularly, it even used to come into our garden, then one day up on the river bank near us I found a dead one, I assumed it was that one as it stopped comming after that. A conservation group had been putting up large bird boxes at intervals along both sides of the bank and it was near one of them, fastened on the side of a building that houses a drainage pumping engine, at a place where we used to watch the owl swooping up from hunting along a big drain that runs parallel to the river, then across the strip of land inbetween to hunt on the bank. I had seen a Kestrel flying from the box and wondered if it pounced on the owl as it flew past, although one night there was a lot of bird noise, a horrible distress sound and the chuckling of alot of Magpies and I also wondered if they were the culprits, as I heard a story from a local character who used to come on our local radio that he had seen Magpies attacking an owl near where he lives.