A WISE OLD OWL
With four species of owl commonly found in Scotland, Cal Flyn discovers where best to find these moonfaced creatures, and how to help them thrive
With four species of moonfaced creatures in Scotland, Cal Flyn tells us how we can to help these birds to thrive
In deepest, darkest midwinter, it sometimes feels like the walls are closing in on us – this year more than ever. A walk outdoors, normally so restorative, doesn’t always make us feel better: as daylight hours reach their nadir, vegetation withers in the fields, and songbirds flee for warmer climes, the whole world can seem to have entered hibernation. But remember this – outside, moving soundlessly through the dark, are some of our most beloved nocturnal creatures: owls.
Although rarely seen, owls are in fact fairly common in Scotland – a fact many were reminded of at the end of October, when a longeared owl crashed to earth in the middle of Glasgow’s busy Mitchell Street. (‘It fell from the sky,’ one witness reported, and was found concussed – huge orange eyes aglow – on the pavement, but went on to make a full recovery at the Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue Centre in Beith.) But though they might be passing overhead in the dark, it can take a bit of work to spot them.
There are four species commonly found in Scotland. The tawny owl, a compact bird with mottled brown plumage and big black eyes, is most numerous – with around 50,000 breeding pairs across the UK. Its distinctive call – an unmistakeably owlish hoot, or sometimes a piercing ‘ke-wick’ – can be heard over most of mainland Scotland, especially in wooded areas and parks, including suburban gardens if they can find a suitable tree cavity to nest in.
They are at their most active at the moment, having established a territory of up to fifty acres in late autumn, which they will now defend all through the cold months until breeding in spring. Fiercely monogamous, each breeding pair will reunite for the winter each year, until death do them part – and throughout this period they will tend to remain within their home range, making their presence known through regular vocalisations. This makes tawny owls relatively easy to monitor, by sound if not by sight.
Despite their relative success in adapting to man-made environments, tawny owls are still a source of some concern for naturalists; their conservation status has slipped from green to amber in recent years, due to suspected declines in abundance and range. Nevertheless, if you live in a mainland region where there is broadleaf woodland and low levels of light pollution, it’s very likely that tawny owls are nesting nearby: just nip outside and listen. Your best chances are on a dry, moonlit evening after sunset. If you do hear a male tawny owl hooting, mimic him by blowing through your cupped hands; nine out of ten times, you will dupe him into responding to you. A conversation with an owl is a charming evening’s activity.
Far less common, but just as beautiful, is the pale and interesting barn owl. These wraith-like, moonfaced creatures fell into steep decline during
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Mimic him by blowing through cupped hands – nine out of ten times, you will dupe him into responding
the twentieth century as farmers moved away from hay in favour of silage, with small mammal populations and their predators suffering as a result. Their favoured nesting sites are in the roof spaces of barns and outhouses, and in derelict buildings, which also became less common.
I myself came across a family of these owls while overnighting in a ruined cottage in remote Strathvaich a couple of years ago. Seeking shelter from an incoming storm, I and two friends turned our horses loose on the strip of scrappy pasture at the loch’s edge before entering the building where the front door was hanging off its hinges. As we did, a spectral figure burst from a hole in the ceiling and cut through the beam of my headtorch, wide eyed and, with a soft thrum of panicked wings, flittered through the confined space like a moth, before vanishing through the doorway and into the darkening sky.
We didn’t see it again, but all through the night we could hear its brood hissing and screeching from their nest in the loft as their parent silently let itself in and out as we slept on the packed-dirt floor below. I could quite understand why, as the writer and naturalist Gilbert White reported in 1788, that whole villages might believe that churchyards – home to a brood of barn owls – were in fact ‘full of goblins and spectres’. Indeed, even the adults do not hoot like other species, instead shrieking or hissing, which might explain why barn owls were sometimes burnt as witches in the Middle Ages.
Strictly speaking, Scotland is at the very northern limit of the barn owl’s range, and numbers do tend to crash during harsh winters. The Barn Owl Trust offers advice as to how to offer supplementary feeding during winter – be warned, it’s not an easy proposition – and detailed instructions on the installation of nest boxes, to which some of the barn owl’s recent rebound in numbers has partly been attributed. If you live in a lowland, rural area within close proximity to rough grassland, your property may be suitable. Nest boxes must be three metres off the ground, and ideally located within the loftspace of an agricultural or industrial building (see barnowltrust.org.uk for full details).
Also slipping unseen through the Scottish skies are shorteared owls. Their feathered tufts are not, in fact, ears, although
they lend them the nickname ‘catty faces’ where I live in Orkney, where they often gather in small flocks to roost communally in winter. Unusually, shorteared owls can often be seen hunting in day time in coastal areas of heathland and salt marsh; the dark rings around their yellow eyes give them a sleepless, hardbitten look.
And they are not to be confused with long-eared owls, like the Glasgow casualty, which are smaller, but with bigger tufts over their eybrows. Instantly recognisable, though relatively rare, they are most often found in forests and copses and will take over nests abandoned by such birds as crows.
If you do spot a long-eared owl, the British Trust for Ornithology requests that you report it via their BirdTrack app (Android/iPhone, free) or to your local county recorder for birds to help them build up a better picture of these mysterious birds.
Those in the far south of the country, in the Borders and in Dumfries and Galloway, may also be lucky enough to come across one of Scotland’s lesser spotted species, the little owl – the clue’s
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One day we might see a pair of lovebirds set up home together
in the name – which has an adorably grouchy expression and big yellow eyes. Look out for them bobbing up and down in excitement in open country.
But those in the very far north can hope for a one-on-one with Scotland’s biggest strigine celebrities: our two snowy owls. In recent years, rangers on St Kilda and Shetland have reported regular sightings. Snedge, as the female snowy owl on St Kilda has been nicknamed, is regularly photographed peeking out from behind boulders or regurgitating pellets onto the grass.
Shetland’s semiresident bird, which can often be found on Unst’s Ronas Hill is male – raising hopes among a few excitable elements (myself included) that one day we might see a pair of lovebirds set up home together.
The last Scottish breeding pair of snowy owls lived on Fetlar, Shetland, in the 1970s. Snowy owls have the ability to fly huge distances when required, so a chance meeting might not be totally out of the question. But for now they are lonely hearts, living singly on their respective rocky islands. One can only hope that one day their stars will align.