Midnight Oil

Title is a reference to how long this blog thing is taking me to post. How can something that so many people use be causing me so much grief? My last blog entry took three hours and three re-writes due to WordPress losing all of the formating then all of the text, causing me to do the whole thing again.

Well anyway enough of the moaning I’m here now.

Since the last post we’ve had a very wet week here in West Lothian. Days of persistant rain can get anyone down, so no real surprise then that some of our owls were feeling literally ‘under the weather’. A few of our trained flying display birds were wet and bedraggled, grounded and weak, so needed a little TLC and a few days in our Recovery Room until the weather improved. This worked well for them and they perked up enough to return to their own aviaries, but what about the collection owls? Well that’s a different thing. Our trained birds are handled every day and we quickly notice changes in their behaviour or moods, from this we can act accordingly. The other owls aren’t so easy to read. Owls, and many other birds and animals, will hide any weakness to avoid predation. They won’t show that they are sick or injured until they really can’t hide it any longer. Unfortunately for us trying to care for their welfare this sometimes means that by the time we see something is wrong, it is too late to fix the problem.

Sadly this was the case for one of our Western Screech Owls on Saturday. It had been sitting up in it’s usual perch beside it’s mate on Thursday and Friday, but a volunteer found it on the ground looking ill on the Saturday morning. Picked up and moved to the Rec Room it was apparent that the bird was in a very bad way indeed. There were no outwardly obvious problems, it wasn’t soaking wet, there were no injuries visible, no breaks, it was well fed (keel bone could not be felt through the feather and muscle), but it was sleepy and shivering. Left in the Rec Room but checked regularly the poor owl deteriorated until it was unable to stand, then passed away mid-afternoon. We don’t know as yet what the cause was, quite possibly some internal problem like a tumor, but being cold and wet may have brought the situation to a head. We will await the Post Mortem results anxiously.

So Saturday was tinged with sadness for all of us at the Owl Centre, but as is always the way when working with animals good things balance out the bad.

On Sunday we had another of Dean Bricknell’s photography workshops and as seems to be the way, he brought the sunshine along again. One of the great things about the location of the Scottish Owl Centre now is the wonderful resource that is Polkemmet Country Park. When the weather is favourable we can take owls out into the park that surrounds the Centre and photographers get some great natural looking pictures. I barely recognise Hosking the Tawny Owl in the photographs that have come from previous workshops, even though I see him every day he just looks like a wild Tawny that you would find out in these woods. Spock our Long-eared Owl is just a superstar in these workshops too, so patient and a natural poser! If only the midges had given us a break the day would have been perfect. Why are midges still around anyway? Oh well.

In the afternoon flying display I took a leap of faith and chose to debut Fetlar the young Snowy Owl in front of a public audience. It was a bit chaotic, with Fetlar still learning to fly in the large space that is our indoor display arena, but the fact he/she flew at all was a great result. It all takes practice of course, so each day we will continue with the training both with and without audiences. I have never flown a Snowy Owl before and there is just something magical seeing these big white birds in flight. If you don’t believe me, come see for yourself!

In contrast to our big white arctic owl, we are also training an owl of the desert… Our Pharoah’s Eagle Owl is around the same age as Fetlar, about 5 months or so, but had little human contact or handling after being creche reared and moved up to our Centre. We have been taking training very slow and gentle with this bird and we had a breakthrough on Thursday afternoon. She had been coming cautiously over to take food from our fingers for a while, but on Thursday I managed to get her to take the next step and fly to a perch then fly to the glove for a food reward. I was surprised to find she then sat happily on the glove waiting for more food rather than fly away again straight away. She did three short flights to my glove on Thursday and I called that a win and left it at that. On Friday she did it all again for Centre volunteer Ian, and again each day since. She is a beautiful owl and smart enough to remember what is expected of her each day. I can see us moving her training on to flights in the arena very soon at this rate.

I think I’ll call it a night with this short update, get it posted and get some sleep ready for work in the morning.

Gnite all.

More eggs!

More owls on eggs today. The Brown Wood Owl that has been in the nest box for the last few days was sitting really low today and not getting up for anything. I’m classing her as nesting as of today. Counting in the diary, her eggs, usually just two in this species, should hatch around the same date as the Spotted Eagle Owls.

I also found that the Tropical Screech Owls have three eggs. They and the Western Screech Owls have been very secretive of late, spending most days in the nest box. The males of both species have been sitting outside or just in the hole of the box looking out, but the females have been inside. I wanted to give them a few days to get settled – if I disturbed them when they were just laying eggs they could abandon the attempt altogether.  If the clutch has been laid though the bird has more invested and will be more likely to tolerate a brief disturbance, as long as it is very brief. I didn’t know if they were laying eggs at all, but I also didn’t know if they were alive or dead so I had to check at some point. The Western Screech Owls were reluctant to leave the nest box but there were no eggs. I may well check them again in a week to see if the situation has changed. The Tropical Screech Owls breed quite well in collections in the UK but the Western Screech would be good to breed. Of course it would be good to breed all of the owls!

Over in our flying displays, today I flew Prince again in his second show with an audience. He flew well again and finished off with a nice mid-flight change of direction that showed that Ashy Faced Owls – Barn Owls from the Caribbean – are more maneuverable  than expected. He may not have quite the class or style of Lofty the Barn Owl (yet!) but the kid done good. We’ll see how he does tomorrow.

Training Hudson and Broo after hours again, we found that the European Eagle Owl was the one that coped with the new microphone speaker system better. I hadn’t expected Hudson the Great Horned to be as distracted as he was. He will adjust, just like the others have. We’ll keep up their practice sessions over the next few days. Broo was great though, less distracted and full of energy. It won’t be long before she flies for an audience.

After my blog yesterday someone asked about how our Tawny Frogmouth is doing. Well Woody is doing just great. Today I gathered a group of visitors into the Rainforest Realm to see Woody being hand fed. I warned everyone to be ready as he is fast, really fast! I can barely get through the door of his aviary these days before he flies to land on my arm/shoulder/head. I am feeding him two chicks a day now, plus a few chicken legs. With the chicken legs he now displays another part of the natural behaviour of the Tawny Frogmouth. As they would in the wild, when they get some prey that is a bit too big or long or whatever, they whack it against the tree branch they are perched on until the prey is dead (and mushy!). He whacks the chicken leg against my arm though! Again it’s amazing to think about how different and how far this bird has come since arriving at the centre.

Well time for me to sign off. ‘Til tomorrow then, gnite.

Snow Joke

Well the snow that had been forecast arrived during last night, just as predicted, and I woke to a world dressed in white. It wasn’t lying thick, but it was still falling heavily. The snow was one thing to deal with, but the strong wind from the north-east was viscious and made the snow swirl around and drift. The wind chill factor was pretty serious. So I started my day with my usual rounds checking on the owls, but a little more anxious than usual.

I was relieved to find that the Wee Owl Kingdom was quite sheltered from wind from this direction, and all the tiny owls were fine. The Western and Tropical Screech Owls have been spending a lot of time in their nest boxes lately, so they were very sheltered and I just saw beady eyes peeping out of the hole.

Moving round to the Boreal owls I found one of the Tengmalm’s Owls wet and bedraggled on the floor at the back of the aviary. I made a note to come back to this one at the end of my rounds. Around the rest of the centre I found that 98% of the owls were either sitting in shelter or in nest boxes. Two or three of the eagle owls were a bit wet but did look alright. I found one more owl wet and looking sorry for itself; one of the pair of Tawny Owls. The other Tawny had gone into the nest box but this one was caught out in the open. I retrieved a couple of carrying boxes and picked up the Tawny and Tengmalm’s and took them through to the ‘Rec’ or ‘Recovery’ Room where they could dry out.

To my surprise one of our volunteers arrived to work. Considering the weather I really didn’t expect him to come through but there he was, and wearing shorts too! Obviously made of sterner stuff coming through from Glasgow!

Between us we made sure all the rest of the birds were okay and then found a ‘nice’ indoor job to keep ourselves out of the weather. Our display area has rows of benches for the audience which need painting with wood stain, so Stuart and I made a start on this task.

There weren’t have any visitors today, as you’d expect, and so there were no flying displays. We flew a couple of owls in training anyway, and today Prince and Tiger showed improvement on yesterday. One of the great benefits of having an indoor display arena is that we can not only continue with the public flying demonstrations no matter what the weather is outside, but we can also keep up with the training sessions too.

Once this was done we fed all of the owls and called it quits for the day. I decided to keep the wet Tawny and Tengmalm’s Owls in their carry boxes in the Rec Room overnight, with food, just in case the weather overnight continued to be wet and wild. The almost blizzard conditions continued through most of the day, but by evening there were more calm spells with clear skies. That probably means the temperature will drop below freezing, and potentially more problems for the owls. I will be out early to check on them as always.

‘Til tomorrow then, goodnight.

This Valentines Day, say it with chicken?

Valentines Day at the Scottish Owl Centre, and lurrve is in the air…

… for some of the owls at least!

Some of the young couples have been mentioned in my blog before; the Great Horned Owls that hoot through the night, the Siberian Eagle Owls, the Tropical Screech Owls, all have been hooting and calling for some time now. Last month the female Siberian Eagle Owl laid two eggs – she didn’t sit on them and they weren’t fertile, but it was a promising start as the pair had only been together around 5 months. The male is still hooting from evening to dawn and takes her gifts of food. I have been noticing something strange in their aviary the last few days and today came to a theory about what is going on…

Our aviaries are brand new, obviously, and so far haven’t had much in the way of plants put in them. One or two do have small leylandii conifer trees planted in them, and the Siberian Eagle Owl pen is one of them. As you can see from the photo here this tree does not look happy! Looking closer you can see the bark has been ‘nibbled’ and a lot of bits of branches and leaves have been pulled off. Is the female getting broody? Is she pulling at nesting material? Most owls don’t make nests, just use someone elses old one, but what other reason could there be? Maybe it isn’t her, maybe it is the male? Say it with flowers, or say it with chewed up bits of leylandii tree? A mystery!

Well that’s something I’ll have to keep watching and wondering, but what about new romance? Well we have that too.

Our pair of Snowy Owls have bred in the past and have been one of the most easily settled in the new location for the Scottish Owl Centre. The male in particular seems to really enjoy sitting on the huge rocks quite close to the front of the aviary, where he often catches a bit of sun. Well today sunbathing wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Food is another of his most favourite things in the whole world, so for him to offer some to his mate shows true adoration! With Snowy Owls it isn’t just a case of ‘hoot hoot here have some food’, no, he has a very special dance.

It does look bizarre to you and me, but he picks up some food in his bill and shuffles about making very odd noises, more like a pig than a bird! His body crouched low to the ground and his wings held up half open from his body, he sways his head left and right. He does look very silly! At the moment she seems to agree, not being impressed one bit. Keep in there lad, even Romeo didn’t win fair Juliet in one day!

I will of course keep you updated on how our hopeful romances progress – hopefully we will see some more eggs soon!

Not all of our owls are in pairs. Some are single birds. We’re trying our best to find them a partner and some have already been located. In a few weeks we will have new birds arriving at the Centre. A mate for our Spectacled Owl, a mate for our Striped Owl, one for our African Wood Owl, all arriving before we open to the public. There are a few owls that we still haven’t found a pair for yet. So it’s a bit of Lonely Hearts for our hopeful singles.

And then of course there is Sarabi the Milky Eagle Owl. Although not technically looking for a male Milky Eagle Owl as she is an imprint, and doesn’t know she is an owl. She has been feeling a little broody lately. She sang to me while I was fitting a catch to the back of the door of her aviary today. Thanks Sarabi, lovely voice!

And with that I think I’d better sign off before it gets too silly round here! Gnite all!