Low carbon birding: Long-eared Owl

The best place to see Long-eared Owl locally is undoubtedly the winter roost at Deeping Lakes Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust reserve. Typically around 1-3 birds roost in thick scrub covering the islands immediately in front of the main hide on The Lake. However, they are not easy to spot: their plumage provides excellent camouflage and they usually choose a perch deep in the vegetation. It is often hard to be sure that what you are looking at is (part of) a bird rather than a bundle of dead leaves and it is easy to fool yourself after a long period of hopeful staring through a 'scope! So persistence and patience are needed. This rather nice video clip was taken by Ian Gordon on 2 March 2020 (phone on his 'scope) of a bird that was more out in the open than usual!

I checked my records on BirdTrack and, over the last four winters (October through to February) I visited the reserve 38 times and saw Long-eared Owl on 10 of those visits. So my hit rate was around one visit in four. The winter of 2015/16 was particularly good whilst 2019/20 was about average with 3 sightings from 11 visits.

There are lots of theories about when they are most likely to be seen. One theory suggests that a north wind is good because the birds will tend to seek a sheltered roost - which will then be on the south side of the islands and more likely to be visible from the hide. Another theory is that they show better if the sun comes out just after rain when they move into the sunshine to dry off (although I have never seen one of these roosting birds move beyond rotating its neck or fluffing up its feathers!).

There are more Long-eared Owls about locally in the winter as birds from further north move into our area, but this is never-the-less a local breeding species. It is on the Cambridgeshire Bird Club's list of scarce breeding birds about which we should not publicise locations for actual or suspected breeding, so I am not going to mention localities.

I find it the most difficult of the owls to locate. Little Owls often sit near their nest sites during the day and can be fairly easy to see. Barn Owls are also active around dawn and dusk near breeding sites and may be out well before dusk when they have chicks to feed. Tawny Owls make there presence very obvious with the loud hoots of the male and "ke-wick" calls of the female. In contrast, Long-eared Owls are very nocturnal in their activities and their calls are rather quiet and inconspicuous. Here is a recording of what I believe to be female contact calls. Made on 7th May, it is a rather repetitive, soft bleating call which, on this occasion, went on for at least 8 minutes, hardly missing a beat:

They are most readily located when they have young. Like a lot of young birds, they make a fairly noisy, repetitive and persistent begging call - which sounds like a badly oiled metal gate (the "squeaky gate" call). This can go on and on for ages! Again, the original recording was over 5 minutes long with scarcely a pause: