By Tania Phillips
It seems everyone is interested in the wine making process at Ballandean Estate – even the wildlife.
Over the past few weeks a family of owls has found it’s way into the rafters of the crushing shed and have been keeping an eagle eye on the workers below.
Though according to the estate’s client relations manager Leeanne Puglisi-Gangemi, the four have been sleeping on the job a bit but that’s hardly surprising given they’re nocturnal.
“We’ve had a little family of owls moved in and we’re very excited,” she exclaimed.
“It looked like there was a mummy and daddy and two little owls, out the back of the winery with the boys working, it’s been quite cute. They have been up in the rafters, we don’t even know how long they were there for (before they were discovered). We realised a few weeks ago that they were there, so every day we go out and check on them and sometimes there’s three, sometimes four, obviously they go out hunting and sometimes don’t come back at night.
“But yes, we’ve had this lovely little family up there and everybody absolutely adores them. They’re just so cute.”
Leanne said this is the first time they have had the owls in the rafters to her knowledge and with no animals at the winery they obviously feel safe but it was a bit of a surprise discovery.
“We’ve started crushing here, it’s almost harvest for us but we’re a contract winery so we’ve had some fruit arriving that we’ve needed to crush and they were sitting way up on the top of the rafters in the shed over the crusher,” she said.
“The boys were crushing one day and just happened to be in that part of the shed and noticed a bit of a kerfuffle up above, there was a bit of a noise and flutter and they all looked up and there was the little family. The owls kind of looked down as if to say “what are you doing down there you’re disturbing our sleep!””
She said the birds have had to deal with the noise a few times but don’t mind too much.
“The other day the boys started crushing and the owls weren’t very impressed so they moved a couple of rafters over where it was quieter and sat there for the day,” Leanne laughed.
“We’ve been thrilled to them here. We don’t know how long they will be there for but we enjoy them everyday when they are there.”
