Tawny Owl at Moore Nature Reserve : 2nd December 2014

Tawny Owl at Moore Nature Reserve : 2nd December 2014

The first birding group morning of December brought a fantastic life tick – a Tawny Owl.

At the car park we ran into another birding group so we decided to take a different route in order to avoid them (as it were) so we walked over Dog Field where we got our first bird of the day – a Kestrel. We watched it sitting on a telegraph pole getting good scoped views. It came of the post a couple of times to try to catch something before heading off for the bushes at the far side of the field. An attempt from there was more successful and we watched the bird fly off with a vole in its talons.

It was a beautiful cold, clear and sunny day so the view over Birchwood Pool was very nice. There weren’t a huge number of birds there but there was a nice variety with Pochard, Goldeneye, Gadwall, Teal and Wigeon as well as Coot, Moorhen, Mallard and Tufted Duck.

We spent a bit of time looking among the trees around the pasture but we couldn’t see any winter thrushes at all. We headed onwards to the little bridge and one of our group located a bird that he had often said used to roost in a tree here but that no one else had ever seen. Well we were made to look over-skeptical when he located the bird. It was a Tawny Owl so well camouflaged that it was hard to locate it until you had seen it and then it was all too obvious !

The tree was really just a trunk, with very few branches, totally covered in ivy way at the back of the stand of trees that you see from the bridge. Near the top the bird was roosting and a few small birds, including a Goldcrest (which I didn’t see) mobbed it from time to time. We stood for a very long time; so long, in fact, that the other group had come round to where we were and, since they didn’t have any scopes, we let them use our optics to get fantastic views of the bird. The only problem, as the video clip shows, was a branch of ivy right in front of the bird rather spoiling it. Oh well, who cares – this was a fantastic life tick and in the last month of the year. Nest up must be Long-eared Owl !!! We have to set our ambitions high.

Everything after this was bound to be a bit of an anti-climax but it was such a lovely day that we carried on anyway adding Bullfinch, Nuthatch, Great Spotted Woodpecker and Willow Tit to all the usual suspects. No Redpolls or winter thrushes, however.

Bird Sightings : Moore Nature Reserve