No Owl Chicks This Year for Orly & Yarly.
Friday, 8 May 2009
The sad news is that this year there will be no owl chicks fledging from the box as Orly and Yarly have abandoned the nest. Orly was last seen in the box at 4.45am Friday, leaving behind the remaining egg.Tweet, the chick that hatched at some point between midnight Wednesday and 7am Wednesday, could not be seen on camera Thursday night. Leading to suspicion that it may have died and either eaten or removed from the nest by Orly. A check of the box on Saturday morning revealed no signs of the chick either in the box or on the ground near the tree. The un-hatched egg was removed from the box.
The signs had not been good for about a week or so. Yarly (the male) was not seen visiting the nest with food as often as he should of. We should have expected between 2 and 4 visits with food per night. This led to Orly having to leave the nest to hunt when she was meant to be incubating the eggs.
Orly was leaving the eggs for periods of up to 3 hours, no doubt driven by hunger. On Tweet's first full night Orly left the box for nearly 4 hours, Tweet must have got cold as it was not a warm night and nothing to help keep the temperature up.
The reason for Yarly not bring enough food back to the box is unclear but could be down to poor hunting skills or more likely a lack of available prey. Tawny owls do have a varied diet that includes small mammals, frogs, worms, beetles and also small birds. However a predicted bad year for voles could have been a significant factor in Yarly's inability to provide enough prey for both himself and Orly.
The BTO are already reporting the signs of a poor year for Tawny owls - "This is almost certainly due to 2009 being a very poor vole year, with the cyclic population of voles being much less predictable in recent years." Read more on the BTO Demog blog.
It will be interesting to see how the nearby Kestrels perform this year after their forced re-location to a new box 100m away. Last year they laid 4 eggs, 3 of which hatched and successfully fledged. This year they have produced 5 eggs.
Below is an image of Orly visiting the box for the last time on Friday morning.
The camera is still watching the box, capturing an image if anything makes an appearance but I think it's unlikely we'll see any more visitors this year.
