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About 70 chicks have been recorded on its reserves this year, with some nest boxes "bursting at the seams" with young owls.

The trust said weather conditions in 2013 had decimated the owls' preferred prey, short tailed voles, and at one point 20 owls a day were dying.

It said owl populations can recover, given "sufficient habitat".

There are about 1,700 barn owl nest boxes across the county.

Last year on the Suffolk coast, where there are 75 boxes, only one brood of two chicks was recorded.

Of the 44 boxes checked this year, 20 chicks have been ringed, including two broods of six, which the trust said was "relatively uncommon".

'Marked change'

Head of conservation Dorothy Casey said last year had been "truly terrible" for barn owls.

"The wet weather conditions meant low numbers of voles and the barn owls were literally starving to death," she said.

"Already this year we are seeing a marked change."

She added while the population had been hit badly, those which survived were breeding.

"Their productivity, due to the abundance of food, is extremely high," she said.

"This year's results show that barn owl populations can recover well from adverse weather conditions providing there is sufficient habitat."

The British Trust for Ornithology estimates there are about 4,000 breeding pairs of barn owls in the UK.

It lists their conservation status as "amber", indicating the species is, or has recently been, in decline.

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State authorities have banned the sale of a toxic rat poison after deeming it a significant danger to animals.

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation imposed the ban Monday, restricting second generation anticoagulant rodenticides – commonly referred to as “super-toxic” rat poisons – from being sold to California consumers.

The products were sold under names such as d-CON Mouse Prufe II, d-CON Bait Pellets and Just One Bite, the agency said.

“They had to be removed from store shelves – only people who are trained and certified to handle them will be allowed to use them in California,” said DPR spokesperson Charlotte Fadipe.Fadipe said that the now-banned rodenticide contained the chemicals brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum or difethialone, which DPR classified as “restrictive materials.”

“If a rat comes along and eats these poisons on a Monday, it will still be running around on a Tuesday or Wednesday – during that time if a barn owl or a coyote eats the rat, the poison ends up in their bodies,” Fadipe said. “That’s why it’s so dangerous.”

Sometimes even pets may eat the rodents, Fadipe said.

A study conducted by DPR and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife from 1995 to 2010 found residues of the poison in 75 percent of the dead animals studied.

Animals adversely affected by the poison include barn owls, bobcats, coyotes, raccoons and the endangered San Joaquin kit fox.

“There’s a whole range of methods to tackle pests, including non-chemical ones, like getting a cat or an owl, or using other products that are not a threat to wildlife,” Fadipe said.

Reckitt Benckiser, one of the 17 manufacturers of the poison, initially tried to delay the consumer ban, taking DPR to court.

But a Superior Court judge agreed with the ban and the company has agreed to phase out production nationally by next year.

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Durban is getting three new wind turbines just in time for the UN climate change conference – despite the unresolved rumpus over turbine blades slicing up a major bat colony on the Bluff.

But the latest project – slap bang on the Durban beachfront – is unlikely to threaten any bats or birds. And the turbines are a lot smaller. So small, in fact, that the miniature model turbines have been installed at Minitown.