Owls born every minute: Farm chimney was a sooty but safe maternity suite for five feathery little arrivals

Tawny owls love chimneys, particularly those in disused buildings, because they make ideal maternity suites.

Occasionally, in early spring, I have calls about owls trapped in wood-burning stoves. Frantic scrabbling sounds, soft hoots or a talon poking down at the back of the stove reveal an owl in trouble. It’s not always easy to extricate them, and it usually means firebricks have to come out or stovepipes need to be dismantled.

If the incumbent has become plastered in sticky tar and soot during its incarceration, it will require shampoo. I have washed a few owls and sometimes need to give them the full salon treatment with a blow-dry. You’d be amazed how patient they are in the face of such indignity.

I brought hand-reared tawny owls to our small farm when I moved here 21 years ago, and they and their successors have nested close to the house ever since. They usually choose a disused chimney in the old bothy.

Although it’s a safe place, there are imminent hazards when it’s time to fledge, the first being that, once out of the nest, the owlets – known at this stage of their development as branchers – must traverse an open area of grass to reach the safety of the wood.

Sometimes we have to fetch a ladder and my partner, Iomhair, performs a heroic rescue. Other years, particularly after heavy summer deluges, the dogs alert us to bedraggled, lost owlets – soggy feather dusters cowering in our overgrown flowerbeds.

We made them a long pillar nest box to use instead. They did for a few years but inevitably returned to their favourite chimney.

I have been taking in injured and orphaned wildlife all my adult life. Tawnies are frequent inmates; their ability to survive despite the odds is extraordinary, and there can be no doubt that they are one of the birds I love best.

Tawnies are one of few British birds that have adapted to living alongside people. How any wildlife manages to thrive in the chaos of our day-to-day lives is miraculous. We make existence for wildlife treacherous.

The ubiquitous tawny is found almost countrywide – in remote corners, as well as in the urban environment, in parks and green spaces. Oddly, however, it is absent from Ireland. Also nicknamed brown wood owl, it has two cryptic colour phases known as grey and rufus, with a broad palette of variation in between – russet, amber, bronze, tan and numerous shades of soft greys.

Most years, I receive orphan owlets and when I release them I continue to put out food nightly. You cannot hand-rear something then turf it out with no food supply until it establishes itself.

In early March 2019, during a week of savage gales with sting-laden sleet, we heard scuffling emanating from inside the stove. The bird guard on our sitting room chimney must have blown off, and something was stuck in the stove pipeline. Together Iomhair and I dismantled the pipe amid contortions and bad language and extricated a large owl.

There is no sexual dimorphism with tawny owls – although females are bigger than males, this is not a foolproof way of sexing, unless you have several owls together. However, our bird was likely to be female. My guess is she went in the chimney to make a nest.

I put the owl, filthy and coated in tenacious tarry soot, through a rigorous shampooing. Outside the temperatures were sub-zero so, despite ministrations with the hairdryer, I waited until evening when she was properly dry to release her. If she had already laid eggs on a ledge inside the chimney, they would have chilled.

We didn’t dare risk putting the chimney guard back up so the fire was out of action until later in the summer just in case she did have owlets.

However, that year the pair was unsuccessful. Though barn owls may raise several broods in years of abundant food supply, tawny owls are different and won’t usually lay a second clutch.

Nature has been my panacea since I was a small child, and I am eternally grateful that this deep connection was forged so early. In the recent difficult times, we have all needed the natural world more than ever. Limited in our travel and worried about the spread of Covid-19, it’s been a challenge not to sink into a decline.

We have truly appreciated the activity in our garden for it has provided a constant source of solace, joy and fascination as we have embroiled ourselves in the life cycles of birds, mammals and insects, and relished wildflowers.

Late in the winter, the nocturnal hoots and shrieks of the tawnies indicated they were setting up territories and reaffirming pair bonds. They nested early in the season but, due to their secrecy, it was hard to be sure they had taken up residence in the bothy chimney.

The mercury had risen high on an April day when I heard a chorus of blackbirds scolding frantically. I was sitting in the garden when an owl swooped low over my head and neatly popped straight down the chimney. Our excitement mounted.

For the next month, there was frenetic activity, the adult owls seen frequently during the daytime, flying home with fat voles in their talons. Throughout the day, one adult sat perched up close against a tree trunk, its eyes narrowed to slits, in a pose that owls strike to make themselves less conspicuous.

Then, one glorious May morning, when I was letting the hens out, the swallows emitted frantic shrill alarm calls. An owlet like a small fluffy pineapple was perched on the chimney.

Over the next three days, more owlets emerged before vanishing again. At dusk on the second night, two perched on the ledge close to the chimney, not flinching when rudely dive-bombed by anxious swallows.

Four made it to the wood unaided, and a fifth we retrieved from long grass, where it was vulnerable to the neighbours’ cats, and took to a nearby tree. Five owlets from the chimney nest – a record. It explained why the adults had been so frantic.

One evening I caught sight of an owlet wrapped in a sunbeam, a halo of gold around its small grey form.

Nature is perfection, and we must nurture it as never before.