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.
In August 2014, a local news reporter at the Wayne County Fair in Pennsylvania pulled aside a small boy who had just come off one of the rides.
His name was Noah Ritter, he was five years old, and he was there with his grandfather, visiting from Wilkes-Barre.
The reporter asked him what he thought of the ride.
Noah did not really answer.
Instead, he launched into a wandering, breathless monologue built almost entirely around one word: apparently.
"It was great, and apparently I've never been on live television before," he said.
He explained that he does not usually watch the news "because I'm a kid," and that his grandpa hands him the remote after they watch the Powerball drawing.
The reporter tried to steer him back to the ride.
Noah obliged, briefly. "Wow, it was great." Why? "Because apparently you're spinning around and apparently every time you get dizzy. Yeah, that's all you do is get dizzy."
He kept returning to the fact that he was on television.
"I've never ever been on live television. I never ever be on live television." He mentioned the super slide too, and how going down it had scared him half to death.
The reporter, by this point clearly aware she had something unusual on her hands, asked for his name and turned to his grandfather to spell it out. R-I-T-T-E-R. From Wilkes-Barre.
"All right, buddy. Good stuff."
The clip ran on WNEP, a local station serving northeastern Pennsylvania. Within days it had spread across the internet.
Noah became known as the "apparently kid," and the interview turned into one of the defining viral local news moments of that year.
@sheyi_williams@crazyclips_ This was an annual event at my halls of residence, in the 1980s.
Our hall was based around a castle, we had Latin grace before meals and had to wear scholastic gowns.
Were we animals, Sheyi? Or not, because almost all of us would have been white?
@AndyBurnhamGM@KateM45 To anyone who grew-up in the West Midlands, the NEC was where we went to see gigs and spend the rest of the night stuck in the car park.
The public who chose Boaty McBoatface are going to have a LOT of fun spoiling your coronation. It’s going to be Votey McVoteface.
“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 💯.
@positivityofx Does X monetise comments? I’m starting to think that accounts are posting really obvious AI, simply to prompt a string of comments pointing out it’s fake.
We’ve had rage-bait, now it’s fake-bait.
everytime i watch one of these videos i think that its very important that we learn at least how to do the first step, never know when we actually need it
In Scotland, new rules are being introduced to require “swift bricks” in new buildings, a small change that creates nesting spaces and helps birds coexist with urban life.
I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of farming inheritance rules…
I’m very confused but if I’ve understood correctly, Brian leaving the farm to Adam (who is not his son) would have tax implications.
Likewise, Adam opting for caravan storage not farming.
#TheArchers
@wessexwildlife In one of those storylines that don’t particularly go anywhere, I remember Brian talking to a solicitor in secret, making Ruaaarriigh his heir.
I didn’t dream that, did I?