Tawny Owls - Autumn Survey 2009

Observation entry for this survey if now closed
- collated results will be available soon

What’s it for?

The BTO is in the middle of its most ambitious project to-date, the 2007-11 Bird Atlas. The aim of the project? To carry out the biggest stock-take of Britain’s birds ever. All species of birds will be counted in both summer and winter and every 10km square from the Isles of Scilly to Shetland will be covered.

Owing to their nocturnal habits and secretive nature, Tawny Owls can be difficult to survey using traditional BTO monitoring schemes. These are usually carried out during the daytime and do not cover this species well. Current distribution is taken from the last breeding atlas completed in 1991, so we don’t have an up-to-date picture.

This is where the BTO Tawny Owl survey came in. By getting people to go out into their gardens and surrounding countryside to listen for Tawny Owls calling, and then reporting them on the survey form, we were hoping to help plug any gaps in the information we already had and provide a complete picture of the Tawny Owl’s distribution in Britain and Ireland.

Over the winter the majority of birds stop singing. However, this is the time of the year when the Tawny Owl is at its most vocal, and on still evenings the classic shivering ‘hoot’ of the males and the answering ‘kewvick’ calls of the females can be heard as they reaffirm pair bonds, strengthen their hold on a territory and ward off any interlopers. All in readiness for the forthcoming breeding season, which, for Tawny Owl can begin in early March.

All your records of Tawny Owl from throughout the year can be entered onto BirdTrack where they will contribute to our knowledge of distribution.