I have always had a fascination with birds of prey and like to seek out their nest sites so that I can learn more about their lives.
All five species of English owl can be seen close to my home and gallery.
From the elusive long eared owl to the over-wintering short eared owl, the barn owl, with its eerie screech, and, one of my favourites - and at just 8” tall the smallest of our owls - the little owl.
There are four pairs of little owl nesting in hollow ash trees within a mile of my Thixendale home. Amazingly, three pairs are within metres of the road. They are quite used to passing cars and I always look out for them as I drive by.
Little owls are also known to nest in old farm buildings, quarries and sea cliffs. They will even adopt a disused rabbit burrow
One year, I decided to take a closer look and erected a scaffold tower near one of the nests. A few days later, I added a hide on top. I always build my hides section by section over several days in order to disturb the birds as little as possible.
This pair was not in slightest bit phased by my presence – the day after they used the hide as a vantage point for hunting.
This gave me an idea. It's great to photograph the owls as they come and go from the nest with food. But much of their time is spent away hunting. I decided to catch a few of their favourite foods– earthworms and beetles - for them.
I left no stone or log in the garden unturned and arrived in the kitchen with a huge grin on my face and a washing-up bowl writhing with creepy crawlies. My wife Victoria is quite used to my antics, but a friend, who was visiting at the time, was suitably terrified.
That evening I placed the bowl in front of the nest. One owl arrived with an earthworm dangling from his beak, caught from elsewhere. He popped into the hole to feed his hissing young.
Then he bobbed out again and the writhing bowl of creepy crawlies caught his vivid yellow eye.
I had never seen astonishment register on an owl's face before. But he really couldn't believe his luck. He moved his head up and down then side to side to make sure he wasn't seeing double.
He spent the next 20 minutes relaying between the chicks and this conveniently contained banquet, often pausing to catch breath on a branch that I had placed there earlier and ‘posing' for the odd photo.
My first night's work had been a success. The following day I collected more creepy crawlies from my parents' hen run, which as a boy had been a favourite place to collect worms for fishing.
This new consignment was soon polished off as both owls were now feeding from the bowl.
It was starting to get a bit ridiculous; I was spending more time looking for food than actually photographing.
So, out came my bird food catalogues and soon I had found the ideal food – live giant mealworms, half the length of a pencil and, more importantly, sold by the kilo!
I ordered three kilos on an overnight delivery. As the sun was getting lower, I put two handfuls of giant grubs into the bowl.
Now I could concentrate on my photography. As I waited with anticipation, I hit upon my first problem – two partridges gleefully filling their crops with the expensive mealworms.
Not wanting to frighten the little owls, I left the game birds to have their fill and move on.
To my disbelief, they were followed by a pair of pheasants. The male proudly called up his mate to show how clever he was at having found such a convenient meal.
By the time the little owls got round to the third sitting, the bowl was bare.
The following night I made an 18” high fence around my bowl. This foiled the partridge, but somehow the hen pheasant managed to squeeze in.
Extra measures were needed. As my frustration grew so did the size of the mealworm bowl.
A three foot deep dustbin foiled both sets of pesky game birds, but not, thankfully, my little owls. They did look a little unusual, though, plunging in and out.
By the end of June, the young were five weeks old and starting to fledge. Each evening, just as the sun was setting, four heads filled the entrance hole and bobbed in unison.
They spent the next five nights exercising their wings and exploring the tree, getting more adventurous each night.
On the sixth night they just scrambled up the vertical tree trunk and into the tree canopy, even though they could barely fly.
Strictly speaking, little owls are not native. Mainly from Southern Europe , they were first released in Yorkshire in 1842 but failed to establish themselves.
It wasn't until little owls successfully settled in the South and the Midlands , having been released there in 1880s, that they spread steadily northwards and eventually colonised much of England and Wales .
They remain absent from much of Scotland where the winters are too harsh for these small owls to survive.
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Wildlife Diary -
