The cameras I hide in nest boxes here in Thixendale, North Yorkshire, mean that I am privy to surprisingly dramatic stories. This year a tawny owl tragedy I witnessed threatened to become a real tearjerker – until thankfully a happy ending presented itself.
A tawny owl named Luna
The story featured an owl nicknamed Luna by fans of my YouTube Channel, where I share live footage from my nest cameras. Luna and her mate Bomber have nested in my garden twice now, and both times their eggs failed to hatch.
Owl under attack
This year, after patiently incubating her clutch for a month, Luna seemed slow to accept her loss and continued to sit on her three shiny white eggs a week after they were due to hatch. As she sat there, her hopes of becoming a mum dashed yet again, I noticed a pair of jackdaws begin to throw sticks into her nest. As some of the sticks glanced off Luna’s wings the insult felt palpable. The jackdaws were filling the tree cavity with nesting material. This species often makes several different nests before finally choosing one.
Tawny's are aggressive, but Luna does not attack
However, as the nest entrance slowly jammed with sticks, I grew increasingly worried for Luna. A naturally aggressive species, this tawny owl simply sat on her eggs and didn’t budge as she was gradually trapped inside. It was quite surprising to see how passive she was and all I could think was that she just didn’t realise that the sticks would eventually block her exit. When she finally got off the eggs and tried to get out of the nest she panicked. It was very upsetting to see her so distraught and so I decided to intervene.Removing jackdaw sticks
Whilst I did not want to disturb the jackdaws’ attempts to nest, they had now trapped an owl inside who would definitely die if left there. I grabbed a ladder and climbed to the back of the nest box, where there is a small door to access the cameras. Once I stepped out of the way again, Luna calmed down enough to see that there was now a way out and quickly flew away. I then removed the sticks. They were wedged so tightly I really had to tug at them to get them out. There was no way Luna would have been able to get out.
Two tawny owlets rescued
In the meantime, a local farmer contacted me to say that two tawny owl chicks had been found on the ground by a straw stack. These owlets had fallen from a nest high in the stack and, since the stack was in the middle of a field and due to be moved the next day, there wasn’t an option to put up an alternative nest box.
Without warmth and food these chicks would have perished and so I knew I had to act quickly. It’s never nice to take animals from the wild, but I had a plan to keep them as wild as possible. Luna, who had only recently been preparing for her own eggs to hatch, was full of maternal hormones. She was potentially the ideal foster mother for these two.
I fed the owlets and then carried them carefully up the ladder, placing them gently inside the nest. Then I retreated to my studio to watch what happened next on the live screens.
Luna envelops the rescued tawny owl chicks
After a while the chicks began calling. I held my breath, hoping that Luna, or her mate Bomber, would hear the sound and return to the nest. And then the magic happened. Luna flew into the nest. I counted a heartbeat as she paused to look at the two chicks and then she rushed right over to the two owlets and spread her wings over them protectively. It was as though she thought her own eggs must have hatched while she was out.
She immediately broods the chicks
I couldn’t stop myself grinning as I watched her brood the two owlets – they were already a little too big to fit snugly under her but she simply enveloped them into her feathers. Over the next few days, she fussed and clucked over them so much that she would barely let her poor mate Bomber have a look in.Every time he brought in food for his new foster family, she grabbed it and then sent him promptly off to fetch more. I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome, especially since Luna is actually a fostered owl herself. She was rescued back in 2017 and I placed her into the very nest box she was now using with a wild tawny owl pair who raised her as their own.
It is amazing to think how the story has turned full circle in that time.
