Yesterday I drove past Lilford Hall, up the road from where I live in east Northants, and thought, as I always do, of Little Owls. It was here that the first Little Owl nest in the UK was found in the grounds of Lilford Hall on St George’s Day 1889 after the bird was introduced into the UK by Lord Lilford (and others were trying to do the same elsewhere in the country).
Emily Joachim of the Little Owl Project has an online questionnaire about what you think of Little Owls – see here.
The interesting thing about what we think of Little Owls is how we relate to them as an introduced species. We’re all brought up to be very nervous about introduced species because species introductions are one of the major causes of animal extinctions across the world, and have caused plenty of conservation horror stories.
That’s not to say that all introduced species cause problems of course, but many conservation problems are caused by some introduced species. So we tend to simplify the issue into ‘introduced species are a problem’. Fair enough.
But most of these issues are caused by introduced species that come from a completely different part of the world from that into which they are introduced. A new species perhaps a new predator or one bringing in new diseases, can be a strongly disruptive force to the natural ecology of an area.
But the Little Owl is different. The Little Owl lives just over the English Channel, with essentially the same fauna and flora as occur on this side of the Channel.
So if Lord Lilford were today planning to introduce Little Owls into the Uk then I might say that there were better things for him to spend his conservation money on, but I probably wouldn’t raise fears of the damage that Little Owls would do if they were introduced – they ought to fit in pretty well. And as far as I can see from the literature, they do seem to have fitted in well. In fact Little Owls are declining these days – perhaps because our farming methods haven’t been very kind to them.
Here’s the link to that survey again.
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Little Owls are certainly declining and have gone from many of my old childhood haunts in East Devon where they were once easy to see. They are well suited to the British climate and had firmly established themselves in many parts of the country. The recent and widespread decline of this albeit introduced generalist predator should be a large red flag to us all.
I did the survey the other day (oddly the day after I’d had my first little owl round the house for over a decade) and generally feel the same as you about them.
However it did occur to me that the problems that are (noticeably) facing the little owl are probably affecting other flora/fauna too. Time to have a look perhaps?
Have a wonderful memory of seeing a little owl in a roadside tree at dusk on the way home from Minsmere. Sadly haven’t seen one for quite a while.
For those interested, the Goons did a very funny impression of a little owl in ‘the Nadger plague’. Though I think Bluebottle is confused and is actually describing a tawny? http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s07e03_the_nadger_plague
An interesting blog. Thank you. I think Little Owls are worth being concerned about in and of themselves but also because they are a beautiful, pocket-sized, awe-inspiring species which could influence the next generation of conservationists. Their decline is an indication of problems with our entire natural environment.
I was lucky enough to help my friend care for a flightless juvenile Little Owl as a child and made many sketches of it in my childhood nature notebooks. I’d love the chance to see one again and take photographs of it to go on my blog with my childhood sketches – a lot has changed in society, in the natural world, in technology and in me in the last 40 years!
David – welcome!
I agree they are lovely.
I remember asking a senior RSPB conservationist about the decline of little owls at least a decade ago, when we were in mid ruddy duck turmoil, and the inevitable response was that conservation wouldn’t care if we lost them because they are introduced. I think that attitude misses the point that many (perhaps most) introductions are harmless even if a few are undeniably catastrophic, and that it’s very hard to sell a hardline non-natives approach without coming over all right wing and racist. Most people won’t understand the subtleties involved and a great many people will jump their doubts across species boundaries. The result is that yet again we lose sympathy across a range of human ethnicities. It also misses the point that conservation is not just about science; it’s about giving people more of what they want to see, and I think owls come high on the list for many of us. In short, I think this is a subject where the simplification of the argument has done nature conservation no favours, at least in the UK.
I doubt that many (any?) conservationists would feel hostile towards the presence of Little Owls in the UK on the basis of their introduced status. They clearly fit in harmlessly and I’d imagine that most people are more than happy to see them in the countryside. Whether their introduced status should mean that their decline should not be a concern/priority for the RSPB is an interesting question. I think it should, not only because it is a charming, charismatic species but also for the reasons that Martin WW refers to above – the owl’s decline undoubtedly reflects underlying problems in the countryside that are likely to affect other species too.
I don’t know whether Lord Lilford gave any consideration to the possibility that an introduced species might cause problems for the native fauna but whether by accident or design he chose well and the Little Owl proved to be a congenial addition to our fauna. It seems unlikely that anyone nowadays would consider it a conservation priority to introduce species that are not and have not previously been native to this country. Species present in our near-neighbours that might seem adapted to conditions in the UK are likely to find their own way across – at least in the case of birds (e.g. Little Egret) and insects (e.g. Tree Bumblebee) and it seems that it is wiser to err on the side of caution as far as giving anything else a helping hand. The problem nowadays seems to be more related to the escape of ornamentals (both the ornamental itself and accidental hitchhikers) and the introduction of plant diseases such as Chalara. I hope that it is not considered right-wing and racist to argue for controls to prevent and limit the damage that can be caused via introductions of this sort.
Mark B – well I hope the senior RSPB conservationist wasn’t me – but maybe it was…
It’s not really a subtlety that invasive species are one of the four main causes of biological extinction on this planet. That’s pretty easy to get across.
Conservation isn’t just about science but it is about conservation – and invasive species are generally speaking a bad thing if you want to conserve species and ecosystem structure.
I love little owls and was very sad to see them decline and vanish in my area in a landscape that still supports ample suitable habitat.
That said, if Lord Lilford was alive today and proposed to introduce little owls now I’d hope the conservation community would work hard to dissuade him – introducing non-native species, however endearing, perhaps because they are very endearing, isn’t nature conservation. It’s meddling, and we should avoid meddling………and I’m neither right-wing nor a racist (little owls aren’t a ‘race’).
There are lots of other smart species on the near-continent that would no-doubt thrive in the UK, so, if we’re happy about little owls, presumably lots of other things can be introduced so long as we can’t discern an impact (which could mean there are impacts we’ve not discerned because we’ve not done the science, or there are no impacts). The habitats little owls often use (such as the quarries on Portland) are in such a state of flux that any effects from little owls couldn’t be detected anyway. Compare that to the millions of pheasants dumped in the countryside every year, the impacts of which no-one is attempting to discern…….
Anyway – little owls are here, appear to be benign, and are cool – but please let’s not encourage other such non-native introductions just because something is cool.
“Most people won’t understand the subtleties involved and a great many people will jump their doubts across species boundaries. The result is that yet again we lose sympathy across a range of human ethnicities. It also misses the point that conservation is not just about science; it’s about giving people more of what they want to see..”
I was surprised to see those comments. If you don’t stick to scientific argument, which is after all a search for the truth, then how are you going to persuade people not to introduce species that may well be harmful…just because they are “pretty” and people want to see them?..Come on Mark!
Doubt farming has played much of a part in declines of L O.
We had them on the farm and seemed to feed mostly on worms and suchlike.
Biggest problems was the increase in corvids killing the chicks and less places to nest as less trees with holes for nesting.
Dennis – earthworms and large insects. Couldn’t farming be implicated there?
It actually appears to me that the increase in animal dung spread on the land has increased worms.
The problems the Little Owls had on the farm we rented was corvids killing chicks and no surer way for a species to decline than that I would suggest
‘increase in animal dung’
Yes FYM can be beneficial, but slurry on the other hand can be pretty harmful. As I’m sure you know, if it’s applied at too high a rate it will asphiyxiate earthworms – usually the cue for big flocks of gulls.
Iron-phosphate and certain chelating agents used for slug control don’t do earthworms many favours either, nor does soil compaction or low SOM.
And the decline in large insects has been pretty well documented.
If the Little Owl is declining due to loss of food and habitat that is affecting other more welcomed species that occur naturally, I would say we should care about it too since it’s presence in the UK doesn’t create great conflict with those we feel a need to protect.
Taking a purist approach to non-natives feels a bit baby-and-bath-water to me since a decline here may also show a decline on “normal” territory.
So I don’t vote Little Owl into room 101 and would advocate that each invasive non-native be taken on it’s own merits rather than assume all non-natives must be bad. Rabbits anyone?
Well put Rob, and the loss of food and habitat is a sore point with me. Around my home our local environmental vandal (oops, sorry) farmer is a chemical king. If it walks, crawls or slithers it is sprayed. If it’s a Poppy, Thistle or a non crop it is sprayed. Hedges and trees are not welcome and are cut to the minimum (or ripped out). It is now more than ten years since a Corn Bunting was seen around here and they used to be common. Curlews and Peewits arrive but they don’t stay as they just get sprayed over ( or run over) and the area is now BARREN. Intensive Farming is destroying our wildlife, not the odd foreign addition.
1. Part of the world’s biodiversity is that species composition is different in different parts of the earth. Introductions diminish these differences, so diminish one aspect of biodiversity. We should not allow introductions and should get rid of those that have already been introduced.
2. Several questions in this survey are irrelevant to people living in those large parts of the UK where there are no Little Owls, yet answers are required. Such casual anglocentrism is one reason for the rise of nationalism in Scotland.
Jeremy – thank you for your slightly grumpy comment.
No one has mentioned Storm Petrels as far as I can see. While they cause no discernable problems on the mainland, when they reach (for example) Skomer and Skokholm as they do occasionally, they cause havoc with stashes of up to 500 dead Stormies recorded by RM Lockley. He bumped them off on Skokholm as they appeared (at a time the UK LO pop. was much higher. I know they deported LOs from the islands in the 1970s. I wonder what they do now?
Paul Tout – thank you. Good point. And I had forgotten about that.
Little Owls do well in Herefordshire’s traditional standard orchards where they nest in rot holes. We love them, but they do make themselves heard day and night! The resident blackbirds don’t like them much, but breeding Spotted Flycatcher don’t give a damn. We’ve seen Grey Squirrel predate LO nest, and Sparrowhawk attempt to take an adult from its perch in an old Perry pear tree whilst we pressed the fruit!
And talking to Nicolas Watts of Vine House Farm recently, rather surprisingly he wasn’t too keen on little owls on his farm saying they had moved into his yards where stock doves and many passerines used to feed and nest but no longer do since the owls turned up…..though as they have declined again recently, the other species have started to reappear!
No doubt he would give you chapter and verse….
Nick
Ps Rodenticides could be a problem for LOs just as they are for BOs…and then there’s the widespread use of those blue slug pellets splattered across farmland all over the place…..are they killing earthworms or (just) slugs do we know?
Mike Toms, in his recent book on owls, draws attention to substances widely used for worming livestock as another source of pollutant causing problems for little owls, in addition to rodenticides. There is a lot of chemically contaminated dung spread on pasture fields plus widespread use of molluscicides on arable fields which add to the potential poison load in insect food affecting birds, to say nothing of the impact on various invertebrate groups and hedgehogs! But, hey-ho, it’s far easier to blame the crows or badgers!
I think people often forget that non-native species and invasive species aren’t synonymous. To qualify as invasive a species needs to have “the ability to spread causing damage to the environment, the economy, our health and the way we live.” (http://www.nonnativespecies.org/index.cfm?pageid=64)
Personally I quite like little owls, and I’m not aware of them doing any serious ecological damage. Net result: I’d be sad to see them go.
There are Little Owl sightings and fossil records which pre-date the first documented releases in 1843. Is the Little Owl strictly non-native if it existed in the fossil record?
Little Owls are essentially farmland birds and we all know how they are faring…
Absolutely love them, they just seem to be so cheeky. I must confess to a certain attack of anthropomorphization (if that’s grammatically correct !). Interesting points on farmland habitat and how modern farming impacts little owls, all of which as a farmer I agree with. The only point I’d make is that farming practices have been bad for some time now but little owls seemed, until recently, to buck the trend and seemed to be doing quite well. I’ve noticed a decline recently while other similars such as buzzards, kestrels, tawny and so on have not. I do feel that general farmland or soil health in terms of a good soil biology is part of the answer and indeed was fortunate recently to make this point directly to a senior conservation figure !
I moved to Ireland, feel sorry for me! None over here