Noisy tawny owl is often heard but not always seen
The nightly hooting and screeching of tawny owls always intensifies at this time of the year as the summer’s youngsters begin to disperse, relocate and seek pastures new as they try to establish areas for themselves.
They may be going it alone and leaving the parental territories where they have been nurtured but they are not altogether losing contact with either their parents or indeed their siblings. The hoots and screeches are contact calls which in essence are saying, “This is where I am. Where are you?”
We may be more familiar with tawny owls than with other owls, yet more often than not we hear them without seeing them! They are without doubt, creatures of the night.
More than any other species of owl, the tawny appears prepared to often live in close proximity with people. Many reside in urban settings where old trees planted years ago in an effort to make our townscapes and cityscapes greener, also provide the tawnies with nesting opportunities. The plentiful populations of house mice, field mice and rats in the urban areas also deliver plenty of food for these otherwise woodland dwellers.
Our other owls, include the recently referred to short-eared variety which is not a woodland dweller but hunts instead over open moorland and salt marshes and is our one and only daytime hunting owl. On the other hand, the long-eared owl is very much a woodland dweller and as such is quite rare and seldom seen.
The most romantic of our owls is of course, the almost white barn owl, which cuts a ghostly figure as it courses low over farmland especially at dawn and dusk. Sadly, the barn owl is these days struggling in a farmland environment that is slowly becoming alien to it. The stripping out of hedgerows in recent times has reduced the landscape’s power to support the rodents which are such a vital food source to all owls.
I believe that a depletion of rodents in our countryside is putting these birds under pressure and indeed, other raptors such as kestrels, as well.
Down the years I have played host to a number of young tawny owls each of which probably appeared to be lost after being subsequently found apparently stranded on the ground by people as they strolled through woodland. In all probability these foundlings were not lost at all. Young tawny owls exhibit considerable enthusiasm when their parents bring food to the nest and in jostling with siblings to be at the front of the queue to receive such goodies, are quite liable to fall out of the nest in their scramble.
Nearly every time this happens, the fallen owlet will eventually make its way back up to the nest using its impressive talons like crampons in order to clamber aloft.
However, I recall one incident in which a young tawny was brought to me which I then promptly took back and with the aid of a ladder, restored it to the nest, only to be told within half an hour that it was back on the ground. Once more I restored it and once more I was told the bird was back on the ground.
This time, having returned it to the tree again
I waited to see what would happen and was amazed to see a grey squirrel come along and literally give the young owl a firm push to send it fluttering to the ground.
I might say that each time I put the youngster back in the tree I took the precaution of wearing a wide brimmed hat. Tawny owls are well known for the courageous defence of their families and nests and the famous bird photographer Eric Hoskins paid for his investigation of a tawny owl nest with one of his eyes! This time I was glad to say the squirrel finally got bored of the game and left the owlet alone.
Others came my way. One, named ‘Mohammed Owly’ was brought to me at a time when the boxer of similar name was in his pomp. Again, he had been found below the tree in which his nest was situated but by the time he arrived here, he had become too tame to release and lived with us for a long time in a spacious aviary.
However, we did have another long-term resident that absolutely refused to be contained in an aviary, repeatedly escaping and taking up residence in our orchard. Unfortunately, this particular owl had been robbed of the ability to fly as it had fallen foul of some cast-off fishing line which had been abandoned when it become snagged in a tree.
Houdini, as we named it, had flown into the line and in its struggles to untangle itself had become so inextricably entwined, that the circulation to its wing had been cut off. Sadly, after a few days, its wing atrophied and thereafter it was rendered flightless.
Thereafter, Houdini lived the rest of its life wild in our orchard. Food was placed out for him daily and daily it climbed down from the trees and took it aloft to consume it. I had a notion that it also supplemented its diet with the odd roosting bird which doubtless it crept up on under the cover of darkness and snaffled.
The nightly screeching of this wayward owl was a regular feature of our lives for a number of years. Others have come and gone, fed until they were strong and old enough to look after themselves and then released but always with a guarantee that for some weeks thereafter, food would be regularly placed out for them.
When tawny owls are hatched they seem to be all eyes, beak and talons. Their feet are enormous compared with those of other birds. Indeed, those feet are interesting in themselves for unlike most birds of prey, which generally have three forward facing talons and one to the rear, tawny owls have two facing front and two facing back.
Of course, the tawny is an exceptionally well-designed raptor.
Its night-time vision is superb and to put things into perspective, in comparison with those of tawny owls, our eyes in relation to the size of our skulls would be the size of tennis balls! However, fine eyesight in the dark is not the only weapon they have at their disposal for their hearing also is phenomenal.
For example, with the ears set one slightly higher than the other on the side of its head and by turning its head as a means of synchronizing its ears, a tawny owl can, very precisely without any use of its phenomenal eyesight but purely by sound, locate the rustling of a mouse as it makes its way along the woodland floor. It may in total darkness be unable to see its prey but it can hear it and place its whereabouts exactly.
Not only but also – there is more! The tawny owl has a soft fringe of feathers on the edges of its wings which means, that as it flies, its wings make absolutely no noise whatsoever.
So not only are the owl’s eyes able to see in almost total darkness and its hearing can precisely detect the location of its prey again in total darkness, this is also a silent, deadly killer and a much-feared predator of small rodents.
But as far as generations of farmers are concerned, it is a warmly welcomed resident in farm buildings, an ally for its predation upon those small rodents that are such a nuisance to farmers.
It is a fact that there is also a distinctively human appearance in the image of a tawny owl.
With its rounded head, its large eyes, the hooked beak that resembles a nose and those square shoulders, perhaps that is why the image of an owl portrayed as a cuddly toy is so popular.
However, I can assure you that tawny owls are definitely not cuddly!