Tawny Owl

Scientific name: Strix aluco

Family: Strigidae

Appearance: The Tawny Owl is a medium-sized, woodland bird roughly the size of a woodpigeon. It has a large, rounded head and broad wings and is a reddish-brown colour with the whole plumage being mottled and streaked. The facial disc has a surrounding edge of dark feathers and the eyes are dark. The bill is a greenish-yellow and hooked and the legs and feet are feathered.

Size: Length 37-39 cm; wingspan 94-104 cm

Call: The Tawny Owl has a distinctive call, but it is not in fact “tu-whit – tu woo” as commonly thought.  This is in fact a combination of the different calls of the male and female. The female makes a sound like “kewick” while the male responds with its territorial hoot “hoo-hoo-oooo”. The Tawny Owl has many other vocalisations that are rarely heard unless within close range.

Natural history: Tawny Owls are nocturnal and feed on small mammals such as voles, shrews, mice and rabbits but will also take amphibians and small birds. The nest is built in a hole in a tree or an empty building, they also use man-made nest boxes. One clutch of between 1-7 eggs is laid a year which are incubated by the female. The incubation period is between 28 and 30 days, the newly hatched young are fed by both parents with fledging taking place after around 32-37 days.

Image by Andreas Trepte - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26228166