Owl Activity

        Tawny Owls are one of the earliest nesters and although it seems that winter is barely upon us they are already finding mates and searching out nest sites. If conditions are right they can be established on a nest and laying eggs in late February. Two years ago a pair raised young successfully in my homemade nest box but last year, even though they had a brand new box and were photographed inspecting it in January, they failed to nest. My hunch is that Grey Squirrels got to it first and took possession in order to raise their own young - they are big nuisance for all nesting birds and have a particular fondness for owl boxes. This year I got myself organised a bit earlier and strapped a remote wildlife camera on a nearby pine tree so I could monitor activity at the box. As usual the camera caught a few squirrel visits but more exciting was seeing the images of a Tawny investigating the box again this month. This is a hopeful sign that a pair will adopt the box,  but as with most things in nature there are no guarantees, as demonstrated in 2021. As a species they are easily disturbed, particularly so when there are eggs in the nest.

           Its been wet, wet, wet this last few weeks and not pleasant weather to be out in the woods, although the owls clearly do not mind the regular downpours. It has left several areas of standing water and made some of the tracks very difficult to drive on. When the rain does fall it seems to come in really heavy pulses with lots of water arriving in short periods of time, so much so that it is washing away some of the stone on our main track in. There will need to be some major work in the summer to fill in the areas that have been scoured out and re-profile the track surface. On the plus side, the mild Autumn has kept many leaves on the trees and when the sun does come out the woods are looking pretty stunning.

Caught on camera

A second visit, caught on camera, in the dead of night

A Grey Squirrel has a look around

water, water everywhere

After the rain.....

....time for a few urgent track repairs.