2010

16-20 February

12 chicks have been taken from the ledges over two nights, so all seems well. Hopefully that means all three (Sophie, Zoe and the man) have made it through the worst weather of the winter, which includes two falls of at least six inches of snow. We haven’t been able — as usual — to find them during the day, and I haven’t yet mustered the will power to face the cold at night, so I can’t be sure that all three really are still around, but the number of chicks taken makes me feel optimistic. As usual now the food we put out is taken the same night.

These owls really do have a wonderful territory. Yesterday (18th) we went into the top, or west end, of Tinker wood. For some reason I’ve never entered it from this end before, and we found it to be much broader than we’d thought. This top end has enough room for a large area of ponds dug for clay or iron in times long past, all covered in summer by a canopy of mainly oak so that the ponds are invisible on Google Maps. We thought Tinker wood was just a strip of trees along a single stream, but in fact the stream divides, and it’s over this fork that the wood widens quite considerably. So our owls can range through substantial parts of three really rather different woods (different tree types) and all with long prospective fringes at the edges of the fields they border. They can hardly fail to find enough food, one feels! Also, there’s good shelter from cold winds down in the stream valleys.

The actual reason for this foray into Tinker wood, where I suspect that Sophie and her man spend most of their time, was to check for possible nesting sites that she might end up using rather than the nestbox she is supposed to use over in Nine Acre wood. We are now less than a month off egg-laying time for tawnies, and we have to be prepared for all eventualities! One of these, unfortunately, is that tawnies are known to be less likely to start families after hard winters.

18 March

Now we know for sure that both girls have made it through the horrible long winter! Tonight I sat on a fallen tree near the nestbox and within a few minutes one female — Zoe as it later turned out — started kewicking excitedly and flying around the wood. About five minutes later another, lower female voice called several times from the edge of the wood, quite nearby. I called them both by name but only Zoe came anywhere close — probably to have a quick check — before moving off and continuing to call excitedly for at least the next 10 minutes. So, nice greetings, and very welcome news. Later I may have heard the male, 150 yards away near a lane that marks the edge of the territory, where he was discussing boundaries with a neighbouring male. The reason for the slight doubt is that I’m not absolutely sure yet that our owls’ territory extends down there, although indications are that it does.

The not so good news was finding a few days ago that a squirrel pair are (or were) in possession of the nestbox. So earlier today I loaded the ladder on to the car and took it over to the wood, which is a mile or so from the house. The female squirrel has been very canny and only taken dried leaves up to the box. Usually they take up neatly nipped off twigs, making squirrel activity easy to spot as owls never bring nesting material to a box. Mrs squirrel had made a deep hole, nicely squirrel sized, in the enormous mass of leaves she’d patiently carried up. All this had to be cleared out as I found that squirrels piss in their dreys, making the lower layers very damp and turning them into compost. There was a long job chucking handfuls of leaves out of the box, clearing all the drainage holes with a stick, leaving the box roof and side door open to dry it out and then replacing the spoiled litter with a much shallower bed of new dry leaves from the ground. To my relief, when I returned for my night visit the squirrels were not back in residence.

Our two released owls have now been out for around 20 months. Of course we had fairly good indications that all three owls have made it through the winter because of the amount of food taken from the feeding ledges, but there’s nothing like actually hearing them! (There have been a few feeds I haven’t reported on, and always the chicks and a few remaining mice I had left in my freezer have gone the same night.)

The $64k question remains: Will Sophie breed this year? The worry was that with squirrels in her box she’d lay elsewhere, but my impression tonight was that she was calling from a roost. To confirm that we’ll have to search the big trees down the side of the wood where I heard her for signs of a nest or hole. We have examined those trees in the past and I don’t recall anything that might interest a family-minded tawny!

Oh, and Sophie’s mum, our magnificent Mrs Owl, is nesting this year, the eighth breeding season we’ve known her. She laid two eggs in her box around the beginning of March — the earliest we’ve known her start. Sophie (born 2005) is now nearing her fifth birthday, and Zoe her second.

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