The Pioneers statue celebrates the canal builders who founded Ellesmere Port and was cast in bronze by Liverpool artist Stephen Broadbent.
Twenty years ago, the Barn Owl was in deep trouble in Cheshire.
Loss of its habitat saw numbers fall by 85 per cent between 1932 and 1985, and when the Wirral & Ellesmere Port Barn Owl Group was set up in 1999, there was only one pair of breeding birds on the whole of the Wirral.
Since then things have improved dramatically.
By 2005, thanks to the work of the now-renamed Wirral Barn Owl Trust, there were 30 breeding pairs on the peninsular, producing 81 young.
Today the trust, working with Ellesmere Port & Neston Borough Council and Wirral Borough Council, works on a series of projects intended to ensure a viable population of breeding barn owls on the Wirral.
One of these sites is in Wirral Country Park, which runs along the route of the old Hooton to West Kirkby railway line. A series of webcams have been set up in and around a nest box in the country park. To view the webcam images, click on the link below.
