Bird Watch:
Then... AG in 1959 and Now... AG in 2020
OF the five species of owls in the British Isles, the tawny is the one whose nocturnal hooting calls are so familiar – it is the owl that has most often inspired poets and is also known as ‘wood owl’ and ‘brown owl’.
Its plump body wears a chestnut dress striped and mottled with varying shades of grey, buff and brown. In common with all members of the owl tribe, the tawny feeds mostly on small rodents, most of its captures being swallowed whole. Indigestible portions of fur and bones are afterwards ejected through the beak in the form of pellets. To dissect these is to get positive proof of the owl’s menu.
The tawny owl’s five or six (sometimes more) white eggs are laid in a cavity in a tree. No nest is made and when the owlets pop out of their shells they are warmly dressed in white down.
B Melville Nicholas
TAWNY owls are best known for their slightly tremulous territorial ‘woo-hoo’ hoot, but the females can cause quite a start when they launch into the fairly piercing ‘kee-wick’ that they use to answer the call of a nearby male. They are the UK’s most familiar species of owl, most commonly spotted in woodlands though increasingly so in large urban parks and gardens. There are thought to be 50,000 pairs in the UK, though numbers are in gradual decline due to habitat loss and farming methods. The tawny owl is not found in Ireland.
These owls hunt by sitting motionless on a stump or branch and dropping soundlessly onto their prey – usually mice, frogs, worms and larger insects, though they have been known to take goldfish from ponds and snatch bats as they emerge from their roost.
As a teenager with a morbid fascination with death, I used to love finding their regurgitated pellets and picking them apart (with my mother’s eyebrow tweezers) to see the tiny rodent bones and skulls within.
Ruth Hayes