Great Grey update

I had my fourth visit to my Great Grey Owl nest on Friday when I was guiding Achim from Germany. We arrived at the owl around 18:40 on a cloudy day to find the female sitting high in the nest. After a while she clearly tended to young although we could not see them beneath her protective wings. She gave her «feed me» call a few times and then at 18:58 the male (who was unseen) hooted softly to our right. This caused the female to get very excited and we also heard calls from the young. The male then glided silently to the nest with a vole in his bill and the female gave her chittering call. He gave her the vole before flying off to observe us and flying nearly over us and off to hunt again. We then watched the female tear off strips og meat to individually feed each of her three young. There were clear size differences but each seemed healthy and I guess were on average a week old.

Feeding took a long time (especially when compared to an adult who swallows the vole whole in the blink of an eye) and when the male returned 18 minutes later with another vole she was still ripping up the first one. The male was met with little excitement this time although one of the young tried to grab the vole. Judging by the difference in behaviour I believe the delivery at 18:58 was the first of the evening. A third vole was delivered at 19:37, just 21 minutes after the previous one so the male clearly had no problems finding food!

The video has two food deliveries and lots of feeding of young 😊

one of three ca.week old Great Grey Owl young being fed strips of vole by mum

dad after having delivered the vole. He rested a bit and was probably checking us out

before quickly flying off to hunt again

mum had her wings out almost as protective barriers to keep the young in place

dad has arrived with another vole