The Short-eared Owl has virtually disappeared from coastal eastern England and it is much harder to find in hills and moorland than it once was. The species is amber-listed and much under-studied, partly because of its nomadic and unpredictable nature.

The best time to see Long-eared Owls is in the wintertime, when Scandinavian birds can be found at day-time roosts. In the summer the “squeaky-gate” call of the young is only heard by the most dedicated of birdwatchers, prepared to patrol our forests by night.

The well-named Little Owl, with its staring yellow eyes, mainly feeds on the ground in fields at night, on the look-out for worms and beetles. We think that numbers are currently stable – is this the only good-news owl species?

With your help, we can pull together BTO information for these three species and use new survey techniques to try to understand what is happening to their numbers.