In the dull days after Storm Dennis a barn owl braved daylight and drizzle to go hunting, quartering the rough grass around the village playground before drifting to the churchyard, where a summer’s worth of wild flowers have died back to leave excellent habitat for voles, shrews and mice. To fly at midday in the rain it must have been famished; no surprise, after weeks of terrible weather at a time of year when rodents are already less active and harder to catch. Unlike other raptors, owls’
