Great Grey Owls - May 2021

nesting Great Grey Owl (lappugle) 19 May 2021

I have long promised a blog post on the breeding Great Grey Owls that I was lucky enough to see in May 2021 and I am now able to publish it after Stig Helge Basnes who showed them to me finally had his own very good article on them published in the Norwegian magazine Vår Fuglefauna.

I have seen Great Grey Owls at the nest many times before but what was different this time is that both nests were in the top of cut off trees about 4m above the ground. This type of natural nest is apparently very rare in Norway where modern forestry does not leave many large tree stumps which can rot at the top and then produce the bowl where the eggs can be laid.

Previous nests I have seen have either been in old Buzzards nests or on platforms put out for them and it was very different to see this large bird perched atop a tree stump. The stumps were not very large though and looked too small for just the female let alone young and a visiting male (which unfortunately I did not witness at either of the nests on my visit)

Another very surprising aspect was where the stumps were. One was barely 30m from a cabin and the other less than 10m from a forest road. There is generally very little activity in the area though as barriers block the roads and they were not cleared of snow during the winter so there may have been no human disturbance in the critical period when they chose their nest sites.

When I visited on 19 May one nest had 3 small young whilst the other clearly was still in the egg stage. I was unable to visit again but only 2 young left the nest and the other nest failed with the eggs seemingly not hatching.

The nest with 3 young:

3 baby beaks

The female from the nest checking me out:

The nest that failed: