Short-eared Owl

Listen to example recordings of the main vocalisations of Short-eared Owl, provided by xeno-canto contributors.

This species can be found on the following statutory and conservation listings and schedules.

UK Birds of Conservation Concern	Amber listed
Species of European Conservation Concern	Least Concern
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (global)	Least Concern
Schedule 1 license required (to disturb)	No
Birds Directive Annex 1	Yes
Listed on the Annexes of	WBD(I), Bern(III), CITES(II)

The breeding distribution of Short-eared Owl has almost halved since the 1968–72 Breeding Atlas (Balmer et al. 2013), and the species was added to the Rare Breeding Birds Panel list in 2010. The most recent population estimate was 620 to 2,200 pairs (APEP4). The species is a nomadic breeder and recent tracking work by the BTO has shown that one bird made breeding attempts in both Scotland and Norway in the same year; this suggests that individuals birds may have a flexible breeding strategy and breeding numbers in the UK may fluctuate in response to numbers of small mammals.

The Short-eared Owl’s core breeding range is the open rough country of northern England and Scotland, where they favour heather moorland, rough grassland, bogs and young forestry plantations. Elsewhere breeding records are widely scattered and involve a small number of pairs, in lowland coastal marshes and extensive grasslands. Abundance is greatest on Orkney, on the Uists and in the Pennines. An influx of Fennoscandian breeders boosts wintering numbers, which are widely distributed along the British east coast from Fife to Kent, in large river valleys in southern and eastern England, the lowlands of Lancashire and the downlands of Hampshire and Wiltshire. Irish records are usually along the east coast.

Since the 1968–72 Breeding Atlas, the breeding range has almost halved and the species is now Amber-listed in the UK and numbers are monitored by the Rare Breeding Birds Panel.

Short-eared Owls are present throughout the year but more often recorded in autumn and winter months when significant arrivals from the continent may swell resident numbers.

View a summary of recoveries in the Online Ringing Report.

Foreign locations of birds ringed or recovered in Britain & Ireland

View number ringed each year in the Online Ringing Report

Maximum Age from Ringing

6 years 7 months 28 days (set in 1963)

Feather measurements and photos on featherbase

Ring size	G
Field Codes	2-letter: SE | 5-letter code: SHEOW | Euring: 7680

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Causes of change

It has been suggested that losses in Scotland may be linked to the maturation of plantations with owl densities peaking in forests aged three to seven years and forests only being used for the first 12 years whilst numbers of voles are high (Shaw 1995).