Owls are head-turners for 20,000 every day
Footage from the nests in Yorkshire has gone viral with one Netherlands bar showing it on the big screen
A group of barn owls in North Yorkshire have become global superstars thanks to a viral live stream – and have even replaced sport on the big screens at a Dutch bar. Millions of people tuned into real-time footage on Youtube by Robert Fuller, a wildlife artist and filmmaker, from his Malton farm during the pandemic. Fans have tuned in from as far afield as South Korea, the Philippines and the US, with up to 20,000 people watching the nests each day.
A GROUP of barn owls in North Yorkshire have become global superstars thanks to a viral live stream – and have even taken the place of sport on the big screens at a Dutch bar.
Millions of people have tuned into real-time videos on Youtube by Robert Fuller, a wildlife artist and filmmaker, on his farm during the pandemic.
Fans have sung the praises of the webcams from as far afield as South Korea, the Philippines and the US, with up to 20,000 people watching the nests each day.
Mr Fuller began sharing footage of the barn owls from his garden in Thixendale, near Malton, North Yorks, during lockdown to celebrate more people developing a harmony with nature while Covid restrictions allowed them to do little else.
The videos soon went viral, and now a bowling alley bar in the Netherlands has decided to beam the footage onto a big screen instead of showing live sports.
The idea was hatched by Niels van Dalen, a staff member at Bowlingcentrum Merwehal in the city of Dordrecht, near Rotterdam, who discovered Mr Fuller’s nest cams while off sick from work.
Mr van Dalen said he has switched the big screen in the bar to show the barn owls, which has been well received by customers who “sit around for hours just gazing at the screens”.
Others around the world have also become hooked, particularly when the birds hatch. Fans have sent Mr Fuller photos of them watching his videos from the queue for New York’s Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Mr Fuller’s channel is currently displaying live barn owls, stoats, kestrels, tawny owls, buzzards and badgers.
Multiple remote cameras are situated around his garden documenting the birds’ every move.
“We’ve been building this up for two years so it’s been a lot of work to get where we are today but we can have 10,000 to 20,000 people tuning in a day quite easily and sometimes more, so it’s quite remarkable,” Mr Fuller said. “We started pushing the livestream in lockdown because people were getting into the green spaces and it went crazy straight away.
“Some months we were well into the tens of millions of people.
“For this to be on a big screen in a bar, we love it. That’s the amazing part of it, we’ve built this big community of people interacting with people over nature – all religions, all countries and no barriers really. They’ve found it amazing because they’ve watched the owls hatching and kestrels fledgling live in the barn.
“A cockatoo was pictured watching the livestream in Mexico.”
Mr van Dalen added: “It brings such joy. It’s so peaceful and comforting compared to something like sports where everyone is yelling. Everyone is just enjoying the wildlife.” With their distinctive heart-shaped faces, buff back and wings and pure white underparts, the barn owl is a much-loved countryside bird and suffered declines in the 20th century. However, the population is now recovering.
Viewers are returning to watch the Yorkshire barn owls incubating, chicks hatching and developing through to the fledgling process. Mr Fuller now hopes to introduce new subjects to the films and produce more curated edits to grow the initiative even further.
His Youtube channel already has 450,000 subscribers and has racked up a total of 120 million views across all of his videos.
The pandemic has reignited a British love for birds, with about 250 different kinds of breeding birds and almost 400 visitors in the UK.