Look at this. You wait ages for a post and then three come at once…
I’ve just driven home from the station after a particularly bad commute on the train from London. I’m driving Mrs BWM’s Ford Fiesta at the moment while she uses the executive motor (she has further to drive). How come a little car like this can cope with the snow perfectly well, yet the full engineering resources of First Capital Connect trains are utterly overwhelmed?
Now I’ve got that off my chest, what I wanted to say was that my journey home was brightened up when I arrived home. There, on the hedge by the driveway, sat a tawny owl. We have a lot of tawny owls around here but you hear them much more often than you see them. I drove my car right up to this one, so we sat looking at each other for a minute from a distance of no more than three feet until I pulled into the drive and it flew away. What a magnificent bird to see up close on a dark and snowy night.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be too pleased though. This was obviously not normal behaviour, otherwise I’d see owls on the hedge much more often. It got me thinking about how owls cope with the snow and the cold weather.
We feed the birds in the garden. Mrs BWM and I regularly sit on the sofa and look out at the bird table – it’s better than the TV a lot of the time. We have three robins (Mrs BWM knows each one by sight – they have some territorial issues but they seem to have come to a truce to share the bird table at the moment), blue tits, great tits, the odd greenfinch and chaffinch and a regular ‘charm’ of goldfinches. The bird table is popular at the moment, and so it should be – the birds seem to get more expensive food than I do! But we’re happy to feed them and happy to watch them, and they’re happy to eat the food we put out, so everyone benefits.
But what about owls? Tawny owls mainly eat small mammals. When there is four inches of snow on the ground these must be hard to find. They’ll either be keeping underground or, like voles, they may spend their time tunneling under the snow. Either way, with their main prey out of sight a prolonged period of snow must be a lean time for an owl.
If I put out food for the other birds, can I put out food for owls? And what would this be? Would I need to get hold of some mice and leave them on the bird table? Is this ethical? And where do you get mice from anyway?
It was good to see the owl this evening but it has got me thinking. If anyone knows anything about feeding wild owls, please do let me know.
Tales from the Wood - The Diary of a Badger Watching Man 
BWM, it’s funny that you ask this question as I have been listening to a Tawny Owl calling very persistently over the last few nights. I volunteer at a wildlife rescue – I’ll ask them your question and see what they say.
Hi Rebecca – thanks for this.
I know it’s an odd thing to be thinking about, but the close encounter with the owl obviously got my mind going. It’s not that tawny owls are particularly rare, but I’d like to help them if I can.
Any advice is welcome!
All the best
BWM
Pet shops who supply snakes stock dead mice and baby chickens I believe. Also I readsomewhere of a man who fed raptors over winter by leaving out bones he got from a butcher. I don’t know how easy that is!
My cat is still catching mice and voles and she very kindly brings them home for me (dead), so I put them straight out on a high fence for the owls and in the morning they have disappeared so I am hoping that the owls are benefitting. We are also keeping the water bowls topped up as well as water is just as important for the birds, although this means me taking a bucket of water up the garden every day for my chickens and the wild birds as well which is difficult in the snowy and icy conditions we have here in northern France. Happy Christmas to one and all
Thanks for your comments, Elizabeth and ergny6. I knew a chap who kept snakes once and he used to talk about feeding them mice. Ironically, I spend a certain amount of time and trouble trying to get rid of the mice in my shed and garage. I’ve nothing against mice per se, but they’re destructive little beggars. Maybe I should trap them and save them (I can see Mrs BWM’s face when she finds mice in the freezer!).
On the other hand, I still have a plentiful supply of rats that live in the compost heap and under the chicken coop. Again, it would be possible to trap them and put them out for owls.
It’s an interesting thought. I don’t know if I have time to try it out now, what with Christmas and everything, but part of me does like the idea of an owl feeding station.
Is it ethical to kill one species to help another? Should I be taking nature into my own hands? Perhaps not. On the other hand I do trap the rats every now and then, so maybe it’s just getting something useful out of a necessary evil.