Tengmalm's Owls and northern lights

Last Wednesday Per Christian and I took one more (final?) trip to Owl Road with the hope of connecting with the two big owls that I had had the week before. This was not to be but it was a good night for Tengmalm’s Owls which were again singing at sites where I had heard them in mid February but not since. This suggests that there was indeed a crash in rodent numbers when the snow melted very quickly but that numbers are now on there way up giving the owls hope that they will be able to breed successfully. At the site where I filmed the hooting Tengmalm’s a couple of weeks previously he was again singing loudly and regularly when we arrived.  What was even better though was that he was visiting and singing from a nest hole and there were two birds. I got some footage I am very happy with and even caught on film how the males song changed when the female called which is described in the Sound Approach as engagement hooting.

We also had some pretty spectacular northern lights.

There are two videos. The first one is my Director's Cut and has long sequences of singing just to give the idea of how constant it was. The second is a shorter version. In both though you hear the regular song then the calls of the female from behind me and then the immediate change of the males hooting to a quicker, quieter and almost continuous series.

male Tengmalms's Owl (perleugle) who was singing from his chosen nest hole