Love birds together in perfect harmony

In autumn they make a great deal of noise as young birds try to wrest territories away from the older ones who resist the attempts with much hooting.

Many of the young owls die because if they cannot establish a territory they will starve but by November these contests are over and the owls fall largely silent.

This month, pairs of tawnyowls, which are together for life, frequently call to each other to keep in contact.

The "tu-whit, tu-woo" sounds for which this owl is best known are often a joint performance, the female making a "kewick" call in answer to the male's hoot.

A pair of tawny owls seldom stray far from their territory and will nest year after year in the same hole in a tree or building. They take readily to nest boxes and the British Trust for Ornithology can supply details of these on 01842 750050.

The trust is also trying to discover just how tawny owls are faring. They are elusive birds to survey and are often best located by their calls.

This winter will have been a hard one for tawny owls, particularly those living in woods at higher altitudes where there was a thick covering of snow for a month or more.

One contributor to the Wild About Britain website who lives in the Yorkshire Dales described seeing tawny owls, on two separate occasions, scavenging rabbit carcasses in broad daylight, one in competition with a stoat which had probably just made the kill.

In the countryside tawny owls are much more dependent on mice, voles and shrews as a food source and the cold winter will have also affected numbers of these.

How this will affect the coming breeding season for rural tawny owls remains to be seen.

The tawny owls living in urban parks and cemeteries are less likely to be affected as they eat a wider range of prey including brown rats, grey squirrels, starlings, house sparrows and even magpies.

There was a large influx of waxwings into Sweden two weeks ago and individuals were reported this week in Preston and Kilnsea, East Yorkshire and on the Eastfield estate in Scarborough. It remains to

be seen how many more will arrive here before the winter is finally over.

A few brambling have also been coming to bird feeders at the Tophill Low reserve in East Yorkshire, Pugney's Country Park, Wakefield and at Swillington Ings, Leeds.

Bitterns continue to be seen across the region in what must be once of the biggest influxes for years.

They are not only at established winter sites such as Potteric Carr near Doncaster and at Far Ings on the Humber where they breed but also at small isolated ponds and waterways such as the Leven Canal in East Yorkshire.

Bitterns are also still present at Pugney's and the Fairburn Ings reserve near Castleford.

Male bitterns are likely to start booming in the next week or two and it will be interesting to see if any of these more isolated birds decide to tune up.

Other birds seen at Fairburn include two little egrets and a merlin, while water rails and woodcock are continuing to show well.

Along the east coast a drake garganey was on Hornsea Mere while two great northern divers, three long-tailed ducks and a velvet scoter were in Filey Bay.

Five Mediterranean gulls continue to be seen around the Holbeck Hall car park at Scarborough's South Cliff.

A female black-throated thrush has remained at Newholm near Whitby.

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