Tawny Owls

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We are hearing owls at night these days. As I keep telling my grandchildren, the twit towoo sound is not made by one bird but is a duet between the female and the male . It is only the male that makes the towoo sound . The only owl that we regularly see around  the house is the tawny owl. They nest in a tree just across the road from us ( an old ivy clad ash tree) and we are right at the centre of their territory.


Tawny owls don't travel much having a territory with a radius of about 2k. Tawnies survive by getting to know their territory intimately. They have a number of perches where they sit and watch. The method of hunting is to look and listen from a perch and then to pounce. The bowl shaped face helps to focus sounds and the large eyes are very sensitive to low light conditions. The birds can swivel their heads around through 270 degrees and they can detect the slightest sound or movement and the design of their feathers allows them almost silent flight.
The birds usually pair for life, and they are very attentive parents. There are usually up to four  fluffy youngsters and the adults feed them and "supervise" them until they are able to hunt for themselves which can take up to three months. The young hatch up to a week apart so a brood is made up of birds of different ages. Young owls are expelled in the autumn of each year when they have to find a territory for themselves.The young owlets have a characteristic contact call which makes them easy to track once you know what you are looking for. We had some excellent sightings of the young owls last year.

This photograph shows the two owlets with a parent bird in attendance. At this stage before they have flight feathers the young owls sometimes end up on the ground and have to climb the tree for safety. The youngsters are vulnerable to predators such as foxes at this time.
Here are some close ups of young owls.




In the summer the owls rest during the day in predictable perches in our orchard. Our attention is drawn to them by the fact that they are "mobbed" by noisy blackbirds (its usually blackbirds) who object to such a dangerous predator being anywhere near their nesting site.
We often come across owl pellets consisting of the regurgitated indigestible bits of the prey (bone and fur mostly).

Diary Notes
It poured with rain most of the night and there were strong winds. I captured an image of a very wet badger on the trail cams but not much else.
There are quite large (100 birds?) gatherings of rooks at dusk before they fly off to their roost.






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