A bricklayer in East Yorkshire has spent 35 years putting up barn owl nest boxes on weekends. This year, the region saw 308 owlets hatch.
His name is Robert Salter. He's 56 and does bricklaying full time. In 1990, he saw a piece on the news about a man in Lincolnshire installing barn owl boxes, and decided he'd do the same. He started with five.
He now has more than 350 boxes scattered across fields, farms, outbuildings, and trees in East Yorkshire. Every June, he takes four weeks off from bricklaying and visits them with his wife Sue. Scrambling up ladders, ringing chicks, cleaning boxes, repairing the ones the weather got to. He's a licensed bird ringer for the British Trust for Ornithology.
In 2024, the region ringed 95 owlets. In 2025, the count was 308. The Barn Owl Trust says that nationally, this year was "pretty poor" for barn owl breeding, but east Yorkshire is the exception, and it's the exception because of one man with a ladder.
The barn owl population in the UK was estimated at 4,000 pairs in the mid-2000s and crashed to roughly 1,000 by the early 2010s. The species is still recovering.
Most of conservation is one person who refuses to give up.
@BarclaysUKHelp where can I go that has an actual cash point? I need to unlock my pin but it seems Barclays local are not locations which have any cash machines which is ridiculous?! Alternatively how else can I unblock my pin? Thanks
You'll want to be sitting down for this bit.
Water companies are currently £82.7 billion in debt, have paid themselves £85 billion in dividends, leak over a trillion of litres of water per year, dump sewage for almost 4 million hours per year, have been convicted of over 1,200 criminal acts since 1989 and an average of 35% of your bill goes on nothing but paying more interest and yet more dividends.
And not a single company has ever lost their operating licence. 👇
На Гаваях американский миллионер кинул булыжник в тюленя-монаха, их осталось всего 1500 особей. Он сказал "Мне плевать, выпишите штраф, любой оплачу".
После чего был избит местным активистом, и срочно покинул остров. Власти острова дали активисту награду 😀
“Apparently there are still people who get a kick out of killing things and taking the lives of others, which is something I find incomprehensible” ~ Sir David Attenborough.
#DavidAttenborough 💯.
'David, we need you for another 100 years'
Friends of Sir David Attenborough paid tribuite to the broadcaster as he prepares to celebrate his 100th birthday
https://t.co/Wt8serGt5G
Isn’t it great that we’re celebrating David Attenborough’s 100th birthday whilst ignoring the message he’s spent the last 20 years trying to get through to us:
@Tesco got these as a substitute item on my food shop delivered Weds 8:30pm and these grapes are inedible, they’re soft, squishy and brown, well past their date despite claiming to be ok until 21st. Pls can I have a refund as my toddler cannot eat these, thanks.
Instead of letting Thames Water off the hook for £123m in fines, I've got another idea. Why not ban it from paying a penny in dividends until it stops dumping shit in rivers?
In 1978 Jadav Payeng began transforming Majuli Island, India to prevent erosion
He planted a tree daily for 40 YEARS and created a lush forest that's now home to tigers and elephants
Seven dogs stolen from their owners have gone viral after escaping from an illegal transport truck and making their way home.
They traveled around 17 km together, led by a corgi across highways and fields, now safely back with their respective owners..🐶🐾🥺❤️
ONE MAN CRUSHES COUNCIL IN POTHOLE WAR USING FORGOTTEN LAW!
Retired 68-year-old Derek Bennett took on lazy Hertfordshire County Council after they ignored dangerous potholes ruining roads in Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead.
Using obscure Section 56 of the Highways Act 1980, he served legal notices, then dragged them to court when they failed to act.
Judge at St Albans Crown Court ordered the council to fix THREE major roads within 20 days and awarded Bennett £1,650 costs.
“If everyone did this, we’d have lovely roads within six months,” he said.
Absolute legend just exposed how useless councils really are!
Derek Bennett, 68, pictured outside St Albans Crown Court, took action after becoming fed up with the potholes in streets in his home village of Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire and nearby Hemel Hempstead
Chinese fishing vessel in Antarctic scooping up krill, right next to whales and penguins
These ships track where the animals go to feed & take their food.
The ship is Shi Dao, the same fishing vessel that was caught dumping oil into Fijian waters at a shipyard a few years ago.