THE sight of a barn owl gliding silently over the Yorkshire Wolds has become more common in recent years.

But it could become a thing of the past if the heavy snows of December and November return, a Wolds barn owl conservationist and wildlife artist has warned.

Barn owls live throughout the UK, but struggle to survive in the northernmost parts of the country in cold weather.

Numbers plummeted to dangerous levels during this winter’s big freeze – which was the worst for 100 years.

Robert Fuller, a co-founder of the Wolds Barn Owl Group, which conserves barn owls in East and North Yorkshire, has warned it could take more than a decade for the population to recover if we get another long cold spell.

Barn owls weigh an average of only 12oz and can survive a maximum of two weeks without food. Their prey – mice, voles or shrews – retreat into a network of tunnels under the snow, leaving the barn owls to starve.

“If we get more of the bad weather we had in November and December it could take ten to 15 years for the population across the Yorkshire Wolds to recover from this winter alone. This would be absolutely tragic,” Mr Fuller said.

Mr Fulller, who lives in Thixendale, has been counting the casualties of this winter’s white-out. So far he has collected 24 barn owl carcasses from nest boxes and farm buildings in a five-mile radius of his home.

“One of the saddest sights I saw was one pair lying dead, the male with its wing protectively across the female,” he said.

Mr Fuller has been feeding his four surviving barn owls with mice caught in traps from his garden.

He has also supplied buckets of rodents and day-old chicks to neighbouring farmers who have reported seeing live barn owls on their land.