Feature articles on Tawny Owls

These pages will have a number of articles on Tawny Owls and related topics. As of November 2007 three are more or less ready. (Nestboxes for Tawny Owls is now a section in its own right).

1. No homes for tawnies. Tackles two related subjects: (a) why are there so few cavity sites (holes) in mature trees for tawnies to rear young in, and (b) why do so many tawny chicks fall out of the twig nests of other species that their parents are forced to use? Both questions have simple answers. (2 pages)

2. Looking after orphaned tawny chicks. How to look after and release a Tawny Owl chick. Some quite detailed stuff that'll help you decide whether you should, or can, go ahead with rearing the chick in the first place. (4 pages)

3. The first 100 days. A pictorial essay with photos showing how a Tawny Owl youngster grows into an adult. Based on pics of one of our orphaned owls taken at five-day intervals. (2 pages)

4. Imprinting. (Preliminary comments, more detailed article coming later.) Almost all the advice you'll find about hand-rearing orphaned owls sounds a dire warning about the danger of imprinting. Here we'll look at what imprinting is and whether it happens with a hand-reared tawny chick. Most tawny chicks found on the ground are 15-25 days old, and the evidence from my own experience and that of others is that at this stage imprinting on a human foster parent either does not happen or is so superficial that in itself it is not a cause for concern. (1 page)

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