04/08/2026
Happy International Owl Awareness Day, from Bunyip the Australian Barking Owl! 🦉 Try to look at life from a different angle today. Little changes by lots of people can make a BIG difference.
Owls are important because they act as natural pest controllers, maintain food web stability, and serve as key indicators of environmental health. Here is Head Keeper Trystan's list of ways to help owls to help humans:
* Instead of chemicals to control insects in your garden, use complimentary planting (other plants to distract or repel insects naturally. There's info on this online)
* Use traps instead of poison to control rodents (or let owls do it!)
* Keep cats indoors (my house cats live much longer, safer, and healthier lives without harming birds or other animals)
* Use less paper
* Take down soccer nets when not in use
* Mow less lawn
* Leave an area of your garden to be wild. (If everyone in Britain left just 10% of their garden untouched, it would add up to the largest nature reserve in Europe).
* Look after trees! If you have trees in your garden, take care of them, they provide shade and shelter for your house and garden in heatwaves, and homes for owls and hundreds of other creatures. Trees in urban areas of towns and cities lower the overall temperatures, and in many parts of the world owls are moving into human spaces such as towns and even cities. Did you know there's a Tawny Owl nestbox outside the British Museum in London? Help your neighbourhood owl and it will help you by eating up to 1,000 rodents a year!
* Plant a native tree if you can! Fruit trees can provide fruit for you to eat, or fall to the ground and be eaten by a mouse, which in turn is food for an owl.
* Put up an owl nestbox. Every creature on the planet, including you and me, need two essential things to survive: somewhere to live and something to eat. There are owl nestboxes for sale in various places such as garden centres or online, or designs to make one yourself on websites such as the Barn Owl Trust.
Bunyip says, it's a hoot! 🦉
