Visit no. 5, April 17th - 20th

I've managed to return to London without the Firewire connector for the camcorder — one of the hazards of trying to use too much gear! So there's some good stuff which'll have to wait until next time. In the meantime here's a written report.

Now nearly two weeks old, the two first-hatched chicks are about in the middle of the nestling stage, while the youngest was a week old at the beginning of the visit. Mother owl is still spending most of the time with them, though her sorties are becoming longer and more frequent. To my surprise she is coming back each time with a freshly caught rat. She must know where there's a colony as on two occasions she's taken a mere 15 minutes to bring one in. The Dad is either less expert or he feels the larder in the nestbox is already quite large enough as the interval between his visits is much longer. At the moment he's active mainly after midnight and didn't make a visit at dusk on the two nights I was out.

Night of 17/18th April

I'm going to have to check the video before writing this up. My memory is that the second night was more interesting. It was very cold (3°C) and I spent most of the time fighting off a desire to sleep!

19th April

Making the rounds of the nestboxes during the afternoon I was relieved to hear the unmistakeable call of the second female coming from a part of the wood between these owls and the house owls' territory. So she's not moved in with the hemlock owl — just keeping her distance for some reason. She's not visiting the nestbox at night. Nice to know she's around nevertheless.

Night of 19/20th April

Got some lovely video shots for this night, which was rather less cold than the previous night! I've also fixed up some neat little eight-AA-battery caddies to run the camera and light. These are much more convenient to clip on and give a more secure supply than the arrangement I'd cobbled together before. They also run for over 5 hours, which is wonderful.

When I switched on at dusk it seemed at first that Mrs Owl wasn't there, but as I peered at the tiny LCD screen I could see that she was in fact standing on the far side of the box. The camera angle isn't ideal and only her legs and lower parts were visible. After a while she went out and just 15 minutes later returned with a rat, which she gave to one of the older chicks. He or she swallowed this rat, which was pretty much the same size as himself, in profile and right in front of the camera, so some nice shots of that to come.

Buffet self-serve

Later there was a hilarious incident when one of the unfed owlets — it may have been the youngest, I'm not sure —evidently decided that it wanted something too, and if Mum and Dad weren't going to feed it, it was going to feed itself! It appeared from beneath Mrs Owl's skirts and pulled a rat from the stash under the camera, hindquarters first. Oof! I was a bit worried as this isn't a good way to eat a rat because the fur goes down the wrong way. Anyway, over the next few minutes it managed to get the rat down, though I could hear it struggling to take breath between gulps and wondered what I (or Mrs Owl) could do if it started to asphyxiate.

I really thought this little chick was going to choke . . .

At 1.40 am, after being out for 20 minutes, Mrs Owl came back with a rat. The chick she gave it to wasn't the older one shown in the thumbnail, but the youngest, just showing as a white patch beyond. It was only about 10 days old at the time this clip was taken, and a whole rat proved one hell of a struggle for it to get down! This longish clip (6 mins, 9.7 Mb) shows just what a struggle it was. I suggest downloading it and playing at a larger size than the Quicktime plugin shows it at.

In the clip Mrs Owl stands in the door for a few seconds before making a noise that alerts the chicks. She then went out and met up with Mr Owl, making the calls you can hear in a better recording below. Five minutes later she returned and settled down with the chicks, making the strange scratchy noises heard at the end, which she uses to calm the chicks and tell them to go to sleep.

Download and view at a larger size in standalone Quicktime rather than a browser plugin...

In this sequence the tiny owlet is in back view, giving the clear impression that all one of these chicks really consists of is a two-inch tube (its neck) with a belly at the bottom!

Mr Owl

Three hours passed before Mr Owl's first visit and I got quite worried that he'd met with an accident — those electricity poles so nearby give me the heebie-jeebies. But he turned up and more supplies were added to the larder. Mrs Owl herself went out later in the early hours and once more returned after a short time with another rat.

For the first time in a long while I heard Mr and Mrs having a meet-up in the trees nearby. These meet-ups are quite different from the almost silent food deliveries, with the parent owls greeting each other enthusiastically. My impression is that such meetings are less frequent than in 2006, when they happened almost every night. Also, Mrs Owl is vocally quite subdued this year — she's calling very little from the box. Maybe, like all of us, she's just getting older.

Mr and Mrs meet up 1.40 am 512 kb, 26 s

That's the meeting she was having while the tiniest chick was trying to down the rat in the video clip. For comparison, here's a recording from 2006 of the kind of noises these two owls can make when they have a reunion. The loud hissing is the chicks: the recording was made with a dish pointed at the nestbox and the parent owls are behind. The church clock (probably Biddenden) is about three miles away.

Midnight meeting 10 May 2006 1.2 Mb, 1 min

Mrs Owl takes a peep at the video man

When the night was over I packed up the gear slowly and kept my back turned on Mrs Owl in the nestbox. I hoped in this way to encourage her to raise her head above the parapet — tawnies are shy but they are also very curious. Turning round when I'd finished I was rewarded by seeing her full face. She looked very funny as she had all her face feathers ruffled up the way tawnies do when they're embarrassed and she was keeping her eyes nearly closed so I wouldn't see her . . but she was having a darned good look all the same. It's the first time, including 2006, that I've been able to look at her openly in the nestbox. Nights, when I'm concealed, can be quite funny as she passes a lot of the time gazing at the tent, so with the video monitor it's a case of her looking at me watching her looking at me . . .

Does Mrs Owl know that a human made and put up her box? I very much doubt it. Tawny Owls are clever little creatures — by far the canniest in the wood in my view — but she just doesn't have the information to form a concept like that. She probably doesn't see the box as a natural object . . it's like other box-like objects that she associates with humans. But it probably doesn't go further than that apart from realising that our occasional presence is a price that goes with using the box to breed. Canniest? I've never known a creature so clever at sussing out whether you're around, however still you keep or well you conceal yourself. They'll fly and perch, fly and perch in circles round where you are, and even 100 yards away, with a line of sight obscured by branches and leaves, they unfailingly know that you're there. I just don't know how they do it. It's as if they bristled with extrasensory perceptions . . and a very acute brain. I'm absolutely not among those, and many there are, who think owls are stupid.

What I'm hoping is that by fledge time Mrs Owl will be so accustomed to my presence that I'll get some good footage of her and the chicks. The plus this year is that the chicks have a spread of ages, so after the first two are out branching she'll have to wait 3-5 days for the last one to fledge fully. In 2006 even Mr Owl got so used to me by fledging time that I was allowed to stand outside the tent watching them having a meet-up in nearby trees. That was in full daylight.

Currently I'm expecting the chicks to fledge from 3rd to 8th May. Let's hope the weather's nicer by then!

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22nd April — London, and a curious Potter connection

I haven't read a Harry Potter book, or seen one of the movies, and I'm pretty unlikely to! Of course one couldn't be unaware of the enormous interest the books and films have stimulated in owls. (Or was it the owls that sold the books? Who knows!) Anyway, today we had a meeting with a long-time contact who's now working for Rowling's publishers to discuss a work project. Absolutely nothing to do with owls, sadly, but it's a long project and I was amused to think that none other than the Potter publishers will be contributing to the real owl project described on these pages. Their offices have a pleasant, old-style reception room that's lined from top to bottom with recent books they've published, and yes, you can't miss the Potter shelf, right in the middle at eye level, where I guess it should be.

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