Wild Britain series: Owls

As the winter night sky begins to overwhelm us, it's the perfect time to place our native owls under the spotlight.

Illustrations by Lyn Alice and image by Mark Rothwell

Barn owl
Tyto alba, known as a screech owl, white owl and, of course, the barn owl, has become increasingly rare, with its numbers halved in the past century or so. This, in part, was due to persecution surrounding superstitions associated with the bird. The strange noises barn owls produce – hissing, snoring, screeching – cannot have helped its reputation, and its spooky appearance, a white ghost flitting across fields, will only have reinforced this view.

Roosting in barns, hollow trees and clock towers, the barn owl is in fact the most widely distributed owl species in the world, with populations in far flung places such as Indonesia and the Himalayas. Barn owls will eat mice, voles and shrews, but also larger mammals and small birds. With their relatively light body and large wings, the barn owl also has very soft feathers, which aid it in silent flight. Males and females are very hard to distinguish, although females sometimes have darker feathers on the edge of the facial disc, and darker bars on the tail. Females are also slightly heavier than males – 360g versus 330g. Their eyesight is very good and allows them to see in extremely low-light conditions which, combined with their remarkable hearing, is how they find their prey.

Little owl
The symbol of the goddess of wisdom, the little owl's scientific name is Athene noctua. In fact, the little owl is a naturalised exotic, introduced at the end of the 19th century. The smallest owl in the UK, it is not much bigger than a song thrush, and it has a piercing stare, the intensity of which is increased by its yellow eyes and strong eyebrow markings. It often hunts from a perch, taking small mammals as well as invertebrates, including earthworms, though apparently one pair on the island of Skomer took large numbers of storm petrels. Laying clutches of three or four eggs, the little owl likes to nest in derelict places, but is also particularly seen in parkland and orchards. They can often be found in hollowed out stumps of trees, but in coastal areas will nest in rocky outcrops.

The little owl was kept as a household pet before their general release in the UK, mostly because they were very effective cockroach killers. On the Continent, little owls were used for hunting – the hunters taking advantage of the fact that many bird species try to mob owls. In Italy, the practice of trading owls for this practice was only officially banned in the 1990s.

Tawny owl
The owl with the most evocative call is without question Strix aluco, the tawny or brown owl. The famous transliteration of its call – which is still used – can be found in Shakespeare: "Tu-who, Tu-whit, Tu-who". The tawny's call is the one that can be mimicked by blowing between your cupped hands – a sound that these owls will respond to.

Their diet is very varied, which is one reason that this is perhaps the most adaptable of our owls, as they'll hunt and eat rodents, stoat, rabbit, bats, birds up to the size of pigeon and even smaller owls.

Highly territorial, the tawny or brown owl can be found across most of Eurasia and North Africa, though not, according to the RSPB, in Ireland. They will occupy ranges between 30 and 50 acres, and they prefer to nest in hollows of trees, so will establish themselves anywhere with trees, including urban parks.

Tawnies are notoriously defensive of their nests: the most famous incident was that of a tawny owl robbing nature photographer Eric Hosking of an eye when he was photographing a nesting pair in Wales in 1938, when he was just 27. He went on to become one of the most famous wildlife photographers of the century.

Long-eared owl
Asio otus does not, in fact, have long ears, rather it has decorative tufts of feathers on its head. It is probably thanks to the long-eared owl that the collective name, a "parliament" of owls came into existence as this species will gather in winter roosts. Probably the hardest of our native owls to spot, the long-eared owl has an extraordinary ability to "deflate" itself, making it appear like a thin branch, before fluffing its feathers back up to its normal size. Unlike the tawny, it is found in Ireland, perhaps because of the latter's absence.
Its diet is mostly made up of mice and voles, hunting them in a zig-zag pattern and striking the back of its prey's head.

Long-eared owls often use the discarded nests of other birds, and likes wooded areas, particularly coniferous woodland and dense shrubby thickets for raising its brood of three to five chicks. The UK's population is thought to be abundant, but the species is very elusive and so this has been hard to determine. Certainly, there are fewer in areas where the tawny is dominant.

Short-eared owl
The "catface"owl, Asio fammeus, is a bird that prefers high ground, the moorland and rough grassland north of the Humber and Mersey estuaries. Unlike our other owl species, the short-eared owl is more diurnal, so is probably the most observed species. These birds are also much more capable of sustained flight and have been known to migrate from mainland Europe in autumn.

The short-eared owl is not afraid to stare at you with its bright yellow eyes framed in black, and its "ears" are, like the long-eared owl, tufts of feathers. The birds roost and nest on the ground, with males putting on an impressive flying display over potential nesting sites for females sitting on the ground. Like the barn owl, the short-eared owl is widely distributed, and is found on all continents except Australia and Antarctica. The birds live on small mammals, mostly voles, and so are very affected by the increased use of rodenticides.

Eurasian eagle owls
Certainly the Eurasian eagle owl was a native, as 10,000 year old bones have shown, and it seems that there are possibly between 10 and 40 pairs breeding once again here, though these may be escapees. It has been claimed that they may have migrated from Europe, even though these are highly sedentary birds, rarely moving from their territory in their lifetime – having said that, there is anecdotal evidence that during very harsh winters they may move south from areas in Russia or to lower ground in the Himalayas. They mostly have very large territories, ranging up to 30 square miles.

Bubo bubo is one of the largest owls, weighing up to 4.5kg, six times more than the tawny, and stands at up to two and a half feet tall, with a wingspan of up to six feet wide.

They are fairly widely distributed in Europe and Russia, living in rocky country, but also open forest, river valleys and farmland. Mostly the eagle owl feeds on similar prey to our other owls, but they have been observed taking down young wild boar piglets and other larger species.

Known as "Uhu" in many northern European countries, due to their call, eagle owls are nocturnal and will select the highest point in their territory as a song post to call from. These huge owls will break from nocturnal behaviour when disturbed by humans or mobbed by birds.