Wildlife
Newsletter for the Township of Dalkey September / 2016 - Michael Ryan |
It
was one of the nicer days of July and at 6.00pm there was still real
heat from the sun sending shafts of light down through the leaves as
we wandered through a wood. Lucy asked me did I hear a unusual noise,
a sound she later described as like a squeaky trolley. I hadn’t,
still couldn’t and would have happily strolled on but she went
to investigate. She followed the faint sound, trained the binoculars
at a tree than exclaimed ‘It’s an owl! Sure enough there
it was, sitting high up on the branch of a Scots Pine, a big rounded
shape, pale and fluffy with dark patches around its eyes. I’d
imagine it wasn’t too long out of the nest but it already had
the two tufts sticking up from its crown that give the Long Eared Owl
its name. They aren’t ears of course, just feather tufts, their
actual ears are two asymmetric cavities, set at slightly different positions
on the head so they can accurately gauge the distance of their prey
when hunting while the circular disk shape of the owl’s face acts
like a sound reflecting dish. Evidently the parent owl had nested nearby and the young bird, just recently fledged, would be sitting on this tree till nightfall when its parents would go out hunting to bring it back some food. It looked down at us curiously but unperturbed with big orange eyes, now and then emitting a little squeak. Lucy realised there was another young owl perched above us. It kept getting better. We returned to the original position we’d spotted the first owl from and got a bit uneasy when we saw a pair of hooded crows fly into the tree the youngster was perched on afraid they might attack it but next second a adult Long Eared Owl which, totally unknown to us had been perched in the tree all along, flew out and saw them off. We came back to the wood at dusk and spotted the chicks again. Somewhere in the surrounding trees a parent bird was issuing a ‘barking’ alarm call, though I don’t think we were the source of its concern since a adult flew in carrying a dead mouse in its claws to feed to a chick. The adult landed in a bush less then three metres |
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away and gazed down at us. The plumage of the adult Long Eared Owl
enables it to blend perfectly against tree trunks where they roost
during the daytime, rendering it almost invisible to all but the sharpest
eyes. Four days later we realised there was actually a third owl chick. |