The Little Owl: A Micro - Documentary

Little owls are one of our five resident species of owl in the UK. The smallest of these five species, although there's no real surprise there. Weighing as little as 130 grams, little owls prefer farmland or rural habitat, but can also be seen in suburban areas too. This is Sulis, our resident little owl. Even though he can be a bit shy sometimes, he's very sweet-natured and he's a joy to work with, so hopefully Sulis and I and my team can show you a little bit about this amazing species, why we should all be loving them and what we can do to protect them. So little owls are a diurnal species of owl and that means that they hunt during the daytime. And one of the ways that you can tell what time of day an owl likes to hunt is by the colour of their eyes. A high concentration of cone cells on an owl's retina, allowing for better colour vision, give the eye a yellow appearance. Picking up colour is largely more important than picking up contrast when it comes to hunting during the day. So this is why we see many daytime or diurnal owls with yellow eyes. And little owls have much more acute vision than most other species of owl because they are active during the daytime. And like all owls, their hearing is very, very good. They largely hunt by pouncing on their prey, or even by running across the grass or across the ground on foot and catching little grubs and worms and beetles out of the ground. Whilst they will feed on lots of insects and worms and beetles and even species of amphibian like small frogs, their favourite prey items are small rodents, mice and voles. To really understand the little owl in the UK, we have to look a little further back to 19th and 20th century Britain. The story of how little owls arrived in the UK is very unusual. It all starts with quite a famous landowner and also a falconer Lord Lilford. Now, like many landowners, like many people who own big manor houses in those days, they had a big problem with kitchen pests, mice and rats living in their kitchens, contaminating their food. So Lord Lilford decided to bring back little owls from Europe to the UK. And the idea was that they would control kitchen pests and help get rid of the problem. As you can imagine, that didn't really work. Little owls escaped, they bred and they became known as Milford owls before they became known as the little owls we know them as today. They were the perfect fit for the British ecosystem and they remain crucial for biodiversity today. If we look back to the early 20th century, we can see that they're still debating the importance of little owls in the ecosystem. Are they a threat? Should they be here? What do we know about them? And actually, I was quite lucky that I came across this fantastic little book at an old bookstore. And it's the report of the little owls published by the British Trust for Ornithology in 1937. Now there's loads of really interesting information in here and it's something that we've looked back on to try and understand some of the history of the species. So it was written by a biologist and also an ornithologist called Alice Hibbert Ware. Now she carried out studies of over two and a half thousand different owl pellets and she's got lots of pictures, information and recordings here in the book to try and put down what these guys actually ate. Now we know today that little owls love mice, insects, rodents and all sorts of things like that but this is one of the first published books that really shows this to be the case. Sadly a lot of the images and the plates have been taken out of this book but one thing that still remains and we don't know where it comes from or what it was used for was a report and it says here for a release on Tuesday morning, January the 25th, 1937. And it's now, it's a question, a questionnaire and a study on little owls referring to this book. It looks like it might have gone into a paper and some of the questions they answer here do they eat songbirds? Are they a threat to game and poultry and to the countryside shoots? Obviously not now, you look at this little fellow here and there's no way he could take down a pheasant but these are some of the things that people were concerned about in the 1930s. In the early 20th century people were very concerned about little owls and didn't know whether they belonged in the ecosystem but this book here is the first study that actually proves they do and has proved little owls to be very important in the modern ecosystem. The history of the little owl stretches even further back as well. Ancient Greek goddess Athena had little owls as her sacred animal representing wisdom and healing. The same principles were adopted later by the Romans their goddess Minerva also having little owls as her sacred animal. Like most species of owl they nest and breed once a year and they usually come to breed in the spring. They come together with the same partner, they're monogamous so they come together each year with the same partner and they prefer small hollows to nest. They don't build their nests they take hollows so it could be a little tree hollow or cavity in a building or even a small hole and there's some hay bales little as four or five foot off the ground. Now egg laying will begin in April and the female will lay usually about two to four eggs. And she'll lay them every other day and this means that when the clutch hatch when the eggs become chicks there are always some chicks that are quite a few days older than the younger ones and this means that if food runs out altogether the adult little owls can still provide for the bigger chicks meaning some of the chicks will survive it doesn't mean the younger ones will die but it's better than having four chicks all the same age that all die because they're squabbling over food. Little owls are quite a shy natured species vulnerable to predators such as sparrow hawks or even ground mammals like foxes. They have distinct markings on the back of their heads looking like a pair of eyes to distract predators. They've even developed over 40 different vocalisations many of which as diversion or mimic techniques to avoid being predated. They are threatened on many fronts in the wild and whilst they can reach their late teens in age average lifespan is about four years. For three years we flew a little owl called Minerva here at the centre. Sulis hatched in 2020 and was Minerva's first chick after she bred with her partner Dot at the British Birder Prey Centre in Wales. Sulis was reared in lockdown so had a strange start to life but he is now a crucial member of our flying display team engaging and educating visitors about little owls in the wild. He is an absolute delight fun to work with and they're known for having a bit of a personality. Sadly little owls are in decline in fact they've declined by 65% in just 25 years this decline escalating since 2002 and sadly they're still not classed as enough of a native species to give them a proper British conservation status. What does this mean? This means their decline is going quickly unnoticed and very little being done about it. So why are they declining? The reasons are actually quite varied. One reason is that these guys are incredibly susceptible to chemical pesticide or rodenticide corrupting the food chain. This can not only poison and kill them but also affect their offspring and their egg-laying cycles sadly causing their numbers to plummet. Another one is the rapid increase in species of corvids crows, jackdaws and other pest species like grey squirrels. These animals compete for their nest sites and will even take their young and fight off adults. So as these species increase quickly thriving of our urban our human populations these guys are sadly declining. Simple ways to help little owls in the wild include looking after your green spaces and creating wildlife habitats like insect hotels which look after the prey species that little owls need to survive. Another one is avoiding chemical rodenticides or rat poisons and sticking to traditional snap traps. And we can all support the farmers, landowners, gamekeepers and other crucial countryside workers all helping to protect the wildlife we love look after our wild spaces and help manage harmful pest species.