Visit no. 7, May 2nd - 14th

The chicks have left the nestbox. One, the middle one, fledged unexpectedly early and disappeared for about three days. We searched and searched but never found where she was hiding out in her first days out of the box. The second of the two older chicks didn't want to leave the nestbox at all, and the mother resorted to starving him — and eventually to dive-bombing him on the ledge — to make him leave! The chicks were eventually reunited by the mother in the big oak wood across the path from the nestbox, and after a few more days lounging in the very tops of the oaks in hot sun the mother took them to the hunting grounds in the fields out to the west.

I've come back with a ton of material – far more than I can process in a few days — plus we simply have to do some work to keep the wolf at bay, so writing up the fledging stage is going to be a bit piecemeal. Anyway, all that matters is that everyone's ok, and to my relief the low-profile nestbox worked fine once again — no problems with chicks falling out!

Fledging wasn't without its dramas. One of the older chicks, Pretty, the female, left the box unexpectedly early, on about her 27th day. She disappeared between our evening visit and my arrival at 11 pm to monitor the box overnight. I searched high and low in the trees for 50 yards around but couldn't turn her up. All I found (to my great surprise!) was an adult sitting half-way down a larch by the path. This I took to be the second female as she was quite small and I don't think Mrs Owl would have stayed put. This owl even waited while I went to the tent to get the camcorder to film her by a mix of infrared and torch light! She only left when she heard male calls some way to the east.

In complete contrast Ugly, the second of the two older chicks, didn't want to leave the box at all. This was strange as he'd seemed to be the most outgoing and confident — Pretty had been quiet in the box and tended to sit with her face to the back wall. But for three days after Pretty left he refused even to come out onto the ledge. Food deliveries by both parents fell dramatically and it became clear that Mrs Owl, now spending most of her time with the disappeared fledgling, was deliberately starving Ugly into leaving. Finally, one night when he at last emerged on the ledge, she twice flew in without food, there was a frantic scuffle on the ledge, and I realised that she must be trying to tip him off. She failed, but he fledged the next evening and made his way in a leisurely fashion over to the oak wood the other side of the path. Unlike Pretty he moved off so gradually that I was able to follow his progress. How Pretty managed to fly so far at such an early age will never be known. I might have missed her in the larches, but my best guess is that in the four hours I was away she made her way over to another location favoured by her mother some 70-80 yards off. Amazing.

To my great relief Pretty reappeared a couple of days later in the oak wood, and after a while in separate but nearby tree tops the two older chicks found each other and even settled on the same branch — as in the photo at the top of the page.

Ugly just didn't want to fledge and stayed in the box until his 31st day. His mum eventually resorted to dive-bombing him on the ledge after starvation failed to get him to move!

Mrs Owl has proved reluctant to be observed or photographed this year, so this is one of the better shots I've managed to get of her while she stood guard over her chicks in the oak wood.

Postscript, mid-June: the house owls spring a surprise

To my great surprise, and pleasure, when I threw open my window late one evening in mid-June I instantly heard the wheezy squeaks of two young tawnies. There's only one pair of birds who could be responsible — the tawny couple who roost near the house. This is the "pine nest pair" of the 2006 Nesting Diary. That year the female laid eggs but for some reason they didn't hatch, and the pair had to abandon their breeding attempt.

But what a sneaky pair! For some time there's been a nestbox near where they roost, and early this year I put up a second nestbox for them. This was one of the new "dutch" letterboxes I'm trying. They ignored both boxes and must instead have used an open nest, as they did in 2006. But I never heard the female callng from this nest in March-April, as I would have expected if she'd been near the house, so this pair's breeding efforts went completely undetected!

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