What a hoot! Joy as owl sightings rise across London

It is dusk, a short walk from the big Ikea in Croydon, and a barn owl is emerging from a nest to hunt. In the fading light, the male owl sits on a fence post to survey the grass below. He faces a busy evening: he is responsible for feeding a roosting female for the next few weeks while she cares for their chicks. The owl hops to another fence post. Suddenly, he dives into the rough grass, emerging a minute later with an unlucky rodent, and flies back into the nest.

- Patrick Greenfield

"I still get really excited," says Tomos Brangwyn, a local enthusiast who monitors the site, lowering his binoculars. "He'll do that most of the night. It's a great sign that there's a female in there that we haven't seen for a while, as she's on the eggs," he says.

The scrubland is surrounded by urban sprawl. Police sirens and souped-up cars roar past, and industrial buildings hum under harsh security lights nearby.

Central London is less than 10 miles away, but the barn owls here are unperturbed, feasting on the same diet of voles, rats, mice and other small animals as their country cousins. This patch of land has supported as many as three breeding pairs in recent years.

Owl sightings have risen sharply in the capital, monitoring data shows, with Londoners increasingly seeing the birds in green areas and back gardens. There were just 25 barn owl sightings in 2010, compared with 347 spotted a decade later.