Long-eared Owl in winter

For many years I thought the Long-eared Owl was just a summer visitor to the Beeley Moor area. This was based on the simple fact that I had never seen or heard one in the winter months. When I first moved here, twenty years ago I spent many winter nights cycling round the moor listening for Long-eared Owls but with no success.

I have a pair of Tawny Owls which nest in the wood close to my house and I decided to monitor how frequently I heard them calling. I found that on some nights they would be very vocal, although this may only last for 5 minutes at the most, but on most evenings in the winter time they were silent. The time of vocal activity was also very variable and whilst I heard them most frequently before midnight There was a significant bias because this was the time I was awake and by listening for them at times when I awoke in the night I found that their often brief periods of vocal activity were at 2am to 3am.

Assuming that Long-eared Owls have similarly limited times of vocal activity it would need a good deal of luck for me to be present when they were calling or I would have to spend many nights on the moors to have a chance of hearing them!

In the end I decided to leave a portable recorder running in areas that I thought might be suitable and whilst I still have a low success rate I have had some success!

This is the typical deep hooting song of a male Long-eared Owl recorded in December;

I think this sequence is a territorial dispute, probably involving two females. It starts with a couple of distant hoots from a Tawny Owl followed by the sound of wing clapping there is then an interchange of calls between two birds.