Difficult times to be an owl

The weather is in the process of changing with temperatures forecast to increase from the -15C of the weekend to +5C this week. I don’t know if that will mean particularly much in terms of birdlife but it will make paths incredibly icy and getting around may become hazardous.

I was only thinking yesterday that I have seen no mammals and few tracks since the heavy snow came but today the first thing I saw in Maridalen was a group of 5 Moose on the ice covered lake which then headed along the shore line towards the city. If they do end up in the city looking for food in gardens then they face an uncertain future as they are considered to be threat to both traffic and people and the Norwegian solution is a bullet… However the council is also good at setting up feeding stations in Maridalen to keep them there so hopefully they will start these very soon. I could also see where Roe Deer have been digging through the snow to reach food and will have to search with the thermal camera this evening.

Moose (elg) on the ice

The Hawk Owl has changed tactics and instead of perching high in the forest looking for Bank Voles running over the snow which I suspect (due to lack of rodent tracks) was not very successful he is now perched low in birch trees in an area where he has previously taken both field voles and wood mice. The deep snow is of course a major problem but it was on a bank where there were quite a lot of shrubby branches sticking through the snow so this may mean there were some open areas. Roe Deer had also been digging through the snow in the area which may create areas where rodents appear. In nearly two hours of watching though I did not see him try to take anything although he frequently acted as though he had heard something.

An interesting observation was that whilst watching the owl I had to relieve myself of my morning coffee. The sound of the ex-coffee hitting the snow immediately got the attention of the owl who was moving his (although I suspect he is a she) head in the way they do to locate where the sound is coming from. Alternatively, he had seen something that looked appetizing 😉.

I suspect that the owl is really struggling to find food and may well have not eaten for days and I hope that the milder weather that is forecast will create more hunting opportunities. A fascinating picture of another Hawk Owl with a Wren in its talons popped up on Facebook yesterday (hopefully this link will take you to the picture). For me this raises two questions:

1.      1. Is it so desperate for food that in the absence of rodents (made harder to find by the deep snow) it has turned to birds? Or,

2.      2. Did it catch the Wren thinking it was a mouse? When there is a lot of snow, Wrens often feed under the snow by entering holes around trees and then coming up somewhere else so it is very conceivable that it appeared out of a hole in the snow and the owl pounced thinking it was a mice.

 

I must admit that my thoughts right now are not very much on the meagre offerings that Oslo currently has to offer but rather the male Spectacled Eider that has just been found in Holland and the possibility that it may migrate north in the spring and end up in the Oslo fjord – just think of that!!!!

The Hawk Owl is now back in the exact same area where I found it nearly two months ago on 15 Nov