HOOT IF YOU SEE OWLS in late summer

AUGUST Wise old owls

The other day I was turning into the lane to our house when I spotted an unusual bird sitting on a fence post. It was large but fluffy – a ball of white feathers with a few awkwardly sprouting splashes of brown like a cartoon. It had great round eyes filled with curiosity. It then revolved its head 180° and flew off silently.

It was a young tawny owl (pictured), still alarmingly vulnerable but fully fledged and free from the nest.

We do not see them that often because they spend most of the daylight hours camouflaged against the tree trunks, but there are a lot of owls around us. The garden rings with the calls of tawnies all year but especially from late summer into autumn, when the young leave to find their own territories. But for the rest of summer the young will remain near the nest, learning to hunt and mastering their incredibly dexterous flight.

Some 30 years ago, at our last house, I found a pair of young owls at the base of a large walnut tree. They had clearly fallen from the nest so I took them in and fed them every few hours with mince. But I was quickly advised to return them to where I discovered them as the parents would find and feed them on the ground and in any event, the fledgelings might well half-scramble, half-fly back up the tree. They certainly survived – and screeched and hooted loudly outside our bedroom window for hour upon hour that long, hot summer.

When I was at boarding school in the 1960s, the matron adopted a similar young owl and it would sit on her head as she walked round the dormitories, nibbling on her hair. You never forget such things.