STUDENTS learned about conservation first hand by helping to weigh and ring two barn owl chicks.

The six-week-old chicks are based near Midhurst as part of a South Downs National Park project to protect the threatened birds.

Pupils from nearby Easebourne Primary School helped out.

The chicks, thought to be a male and female, weighed 290 grams and 380 grams respectively.

More than 220 barn owl boxes have now been installed across the South Downs by the National Park Authority and the South Downs volunteer ranger service.

Barn owls underwent a big decline in the 20th century and, although numbers have stabilised since the mid-1990s, the British Trust for Ornithology estimates only about 4,000 breeding pairs remain in the UK.

They are on the amber list of UK birds of conservation concern.

Park ranger Angela Ward said: “Barn Owls can struggle to find homes because they like to nest in holes in large old trees and accessible barns and there are less of these around than there used to be.”