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Little owls were successfully introduced into the UK at Lilford Hall by the 4th Baron Lilford in 1889; on St George’s Day, his gamekeeper found a little owl on a nest.
Lilford Hall is just down the road from me, here in east Northants. I haven’t seen a little owl for ages and ages in the UK but I remember some very nice ones I once saw near Trujillo in Spain.
This evening I am going out on a little owl hunt provided the weather is OK. Wish me luck!
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Mark. Good luck. (though I’m sure you won’t need it).
I’m lucky enough to have followed, photographed and filmed a family of local little owls over the last year.
Please click the link below to see the first of this year’s clips (which includes a surprise visit from another non native bird).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwyMsk8DOfg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Paul Riddle’s “Owl’s about that then” blog is an excellent blog detailing one man’s crusade to help his local Little Owls. Well worth a read:
http://owlsaboutthatthen.blogspot.co.uk/
I don’t think Storm Petrels, Little Terns, Skylark and some other native breeding birds share your enthusiasm for this non-native species…
Best of luck Mark. I’m sure there is a very funny passage in one episode of the Goon Show where Bluebottle is looking for a little owl having heard it calling – can’t remember which one, but clearly they’d become established enough by the 1950s for Spike Milligan to be aware of them! The thought of you scouring the Northants countryside this evening talking to yourself in a high pitched voice made me chuckle!
Was watching one sun bathing on an old Oak in the early rays of sunshine this morning – just about the time you posted this blog entry! Great little birds. Good luck
They are around the humberhead peatlands.
Just back from a week in Tuscany,highlights being a Hoopoe flying around a Olive Grove and really strange was a good sighting in the middle of the day of a Pine Martin at the end of rows of Grape Vines.
Did read your blog but strangely unable to comment as it kept saying e-mail unacceptable,think it was simply connected to a different browser or something too technical for a Dinosaur like me.
They are not just Lilford’s owl. Don’t forget Capt Meade-Waldo in Kent! I think it was about the same time as Lilford, but haven’t had time to check the literature. Broadly speaking (I hadn’t previously heard of problems with Stormies) they are one of the few introductions I tend to think of as reasonably benign.
Peter – Lilford won the race and no-one remembers the silver medal winner! I think little owls are completely benign and that’s because they are ‘near-native’ species. They just didn’t make it across the Channel but they live with all the species they could encounter in the UK with those same species elsewhere in Europe. That’s a very different situation from ruddy duck, pheasant, ring-necked parakeet etc. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the non-native species will cause problems, but it means that we certainly can’t rule out that they will.