Page 38 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #12

In one village, as we look up, we see the
ear tufts first then our eyes make sense of
a narrow, bark-coloured owl peering down
at us with alert eyes. I focus my binoculars
to get a better view of its patterning. The
breast-streaks are for disguise when the bird
is roosting. Its back is finely speckled and the
colour of ashes. The upper-wing coverts are
dotted with white ‘braces’, an adornment I
have also seen on tawnies. The feet are almost
invisible, covered over by pale frills of down,
so soft they look as if they’ve been blow-dried
for a beauty contest.
The long-eared owl’s face is distinctive – a
white-rimmed facial disc and pale, vertical
‘eyebrows’. The erect ear tufts and narrow,
sleek, upright stance give these owls a
startling appearance that makes them look
affronted. But this one seems to have every
confidence that it is invisible. It narrows its
bright irises to two glowing slivers, so as
not to attract attention, and sits twig-still,
its talons gently curled around the branch.
This owl may occupy a position somewhere
between cute and ridiculous but its death-by-
stealth weaponry reveals a predator that is
designed to execute without hesitation.
“How many do you think are in this tree?”
Milan asks. "Six? Nine?" We try to count,
squinting and staring. Eventually, we give up.
38 BBC Wildlife
Clockwise from chocolate vertical
top left: visitors to splashes that help
Kikinda sit beneath it blend into the
the town's trees at trees; Kikinda has
their own risk; the embraced its owl
long-eared owl has population, which
a soft beige front, has become part of
flecked with little the town's appeal.
“27!” Milan declares. “No, 29! In one tree!”
The trees are not huge, but the junipers,
with their evergreen blankets of aromatic
needles and their copious, drooping boughs,
create pockets of darkness that conceal their
precious cargo. “However many you think
[there are], double it,” Milan adds. “For the
locals, the owls have always been there, and
are not often of interest.”
Home sweet home
To understand any owl species, you need to
understand its habitat. Long-eared owls are
specialised, in that they need dense arboreal
cover and also rough, open grassland. This
Theowlsmusthave
beenround-eyedat
myintrusionintotheir
pine-needle kingdom.
makes the long-eared owl a frontier species.
It occupies the edges of these two very
different habitats – conifers, to hide from
predators, and open hunting grounds full of
small mammals. In Britain, this combination
of habitats may be quite limited, and could
explain part of the reason why our long-eared
owl numbers appear to be so low, in stark
contrast to the healthy population in Serbia.
Although these owls can, and do, nest on
the ground, they prefer to occupy pre-built
homes, such as the old nests of crows, but
these platforms produce a problem. Corvids
are careless builders, and many of the Serbian
long-eared owls’ breeding attempts fail due
December 2018