Long-eared Owls 2025

I have two owl related pastimes that 99% of the time result in failure but there is always that one percent...

My first is scraping on tree trunks below old Black Woodpecker holes and hoping a Tengmalm's Owl will stick its head out. This has only ever worked once and another time I had a Goldeneye but otherwise nothing which always strikes me as strange as we are talking about many holes over many years. Experiences this year though suggest that it may be my scratching technique that is the issue rather than lack of owls – how difficult is it to scratch correctly though??

The second is checking old crows nests for a couple of ears and this has now worked the grand total of three times. This year’s successful effort resulted in a nest that was quite low down and flimsy (if it actually is a crows nest..) and very close to a fairly well used path. The sturdier Crows nests that I found including the nest used by the LEOs last year were being used by crows themselves so the LEOs probably had to make do with what they could find.

This nest allowed really good observation conditions due to it being in a dead, and therefore leafless tree, and at around 4 metres in height it was possible to see well. I discovered the nest on April 24^th and the female was clearly incubating and the male about 20m away roosting in a spruce which judging by the amount of droppings on the ground and branches was very regularly used. Subsequent visits revealed the same situation with both birds in the same places until a visit on 6 May when the female was sitting noticeably higher in the nest and had a wing out. After some waiting a small and downy head stuck out from under the wing. I estimate the youngster was only around 4 days old and the female was clearly either still incubating eggs or had other most likely even smaller young that she was brooding. Egg laying would therefore have occurred in early April.

I originally assumed that this nest was of the male I had singing 2.5km away earlier in the spring but on 7 May I became aware of another nest only about 500m from where I had the singing bird. This nest was in an old Magpie nest and only about 3m high. I sawe 3 young of different sizes with the oldest probably 4 weeks old and it and the next oldest sibling were already clambering around in branches away from the nest. This nest which like the other one was surprisingly close to a well used path would have been wonderful to have discovered earlier as it would have been easy to follow the progress of the young from a safe distance. Egg laying must have happened early in March which corresponds well with me having an actively singing owl on 6^th March but subsequent visits revealed much less activity. This pair therefore nested around a month earlier than the other pair.

I followed the initial nest as often as I could and there were two young with an unhatched egg visible stuck under twigs on the edge of the nest. Only two hatched young perhaps suggests a lack of food but both young seemed to progress well and on 23 May had left the nest with one young in a nearby small tree and the other perched a metre or so above the nest. The presumed female was nearby and called when I got too close to the young that had left the nest tree (and which I hadn’t seen before then). These young have therefore left the nest as around 3 weeks old. This was my last visit.

 

At the other nest I found there were actually four young and a check under the nest tree revealed a smashed unhatched egg. A clutch of 5 is apparently the maximum recorded for the species. All four young looked healthy and a sighting of them perched together on 16 May was my last sighting. They must very soon after this have left the immediate nest area which will have meant crossing at least 100m over a field. It would have been fascinating to witness this. Presumably they are encouraged to move by the parents but how do the parents keep all of them together and how much of the 100m do they manage to fly and how much do they walk?

 

Nest 1:

the nest about 4m up a dead spruce tree

a couple of ears sticking over the rim - the female incubating

and the male roosting in a nearby spruce. Note the droppings on the lower branches showing how well used this tree is

here the female is sitting higher and has a wing over something suggesting very strongly eggs have hatched

and here is a young

here we can see an egg that ended up being pushed out to the edge of the nest and not hatching or maybe it was pushed out because it didn't hatch but it seems well and truly buried under twigs

two young

this is I believe the female and her warning calls told me the young had left the nest

this one was perched above the nest

whilst this one had moved to a nearby tree

mum stayed close

Nest 2:

the old Magpie (skjære) nest that was used

from underneath

this unhatched egg on the floor must only just have been pushed out of the nest and smashed

dad I think

and mum

dad

the youngest still perched on nest whilst the three others were already away from the nest in the small trees surrounding it

it was very cool to come across all four of them perched together and this was also the last time I saw them.  The youngest is #2 from the left and the oldest looks to be #3.

If you have scrolled this far then you have qualified to reading a rant 😂

I have tried for a long time to avoid sharing my views on the unserious side of ringing (which appears to me to be the dominant form in Norway) but events on 13 May mean I can’t hold back. There are of course far graver threats to birds than the activities of «misguided» ringers but what keeps my blood boiling is that those responsible for ringing in Norway appear to have absolutely zero interest in promoting responsible ringing and accept no criticism of their «profession». And why would you when a complete lack of rules means you are free to do whatever you want and ringing must after all fulfil many of man’s basic desires of hunting, catching and touching.

There are of course some (many?) serious ringers in Norway. Two bird observatories have Constant Effort Schemes but it is telling that even the most famous one, Lista, cannot find Norwegian ringers to do such «boring» work. There are other observatories and ringing groups that participate in various projects and clearly have very high standards around the way they work – I have been left very impressed after my visits to the observatory at Store Færder. HOWEVER, the majority of ringers just chuck up a net to fill the time with the hope of catching a rarity or for some there is clearly a huge kick from more extreme sorts of capturing the birds - mist nets are for pussies.

But back to 13 May. I was on my way to check on the progress of the first nest I found when I met 4 members of the local ringing group coming towards me. It turned out they had just ringed the 2 young in the nest. I must admit to being completely dumbfounded and let them know. Climbing up that dead, spindly tree to reach a fragile old nest was just madness as the chance of the nest falling was high and secondly the young were just too small to be ringed - they were still under half the size of mum who was still brooding them. When I got to the nest mum was for the first time not on the nest and nor was she there an hour later when I returned past the nest.

I am unaware of the conservation concerns or knowledge gaps that mean it is so necessary to ring these birds that the risk is considered acceptable - presumably there aren’t any?

To prove my point regarding the risk to the nest of climbing the tree half the nest fell down at some point between 16^th and 21^st May. Thankfully the young were on the remaining half of the nest on 21^st May but this just proves the fragility of the nest. I am not suggesting the ringers caused this to happen – the nest was clearly so fragile that wind (and it had been very windy in that period) or just the growing weight and movements of the owls themselves will have caused the collapse – BUT this was proof that no heavy human should ever have been climbing in such a thin, dead tree to access a fragile old nest.

I have seen from Instagram and FB that the second nest had also been discovered by photographers although their focus seemed to be on capturing the adult birds hunting so either at dawn or dusk. I only once saw any photographers at either nest and that was surprisingly the first nest so don’t know whether their attentions had any effect on the owls but have seen nothing to suggest so unlike the blingers.

Of course my visits will have had some effect on the owls but I kept them short and just wanted to document the progress of the young. I never flushed an adult bird off the nest although on a couple of occasions did surprise a roosting adult such that it flew to another tree.