You can walk a neighbourhood for a quite a while without knowing you are in the company of little owls.
Small as a thrush, and the colour of easily disregarded parts of the landscape, they spend daylight hours perched still, often on the low bough of a favoured tree, or in the recess in a ruined wall.
For those of us keen to encounter them (and frankly, if you’re not, I’d advise you to seek help immediately) recognition of their voice is a big help.
True, little owls spend long periods in silence. But they can produce a wide array of shrill squeaks and chittering noises, especially around dawn and dusk.
The most distinctive is a rythmic whirring weeoo.
These calls build to a manic pace for a few seconds, sometimes setting off another nearby owl, before slowing down and petering out, like the two in the recording above.
It’s not disimilar to a wigeon’s cry. You can file both under ‘fiercely enthusiastic’.
Despite being creatures of the night, little owls are partial to sunshine.
They often settle in an east-facing spot early in the day to soak up a few rays. Scan along a wall, a line of trees, or the roofline of farm buildings and you just might find your gaze interlocking with a pair of yellow eyes.
If you’re lucky enough to encounter them closer to dark, you might see one getting active in search of food.
This is not the buoyant, quartering flight of their bigger cousins, like a barn owl or a short-eared owl. It’s a quick dart and a pounce - maybe even a sprint on foot - for a small rodent or a beetle, or to pluck an earthworm from the soil.
But for all the fieldwork you might apply to the task, perhaps the best way to tell whether somewhere has little owls in the first place is to talk to people who live there.
A friend who farms at the edge of our town, sees one sometimes at dusk, atop the washing line in her garden. It’s probably watching for mice under the bird feeder.
Since she told me, I’ve paid much closer attention to the neighbouring fields. These are old paddocks, not too tidy, with tumbledown buildings and veteran trees still standing here and there.
With patience, you can sometimes spot a little owl or two in the hedgerows, in broad daylight. Last summer, we were able to see a recently-fledged bird, with its plain-brown head and not-yet-so-fierce expression, appraising the world from an old willow tree.
Little owls are native to continental Europe and were introduced to the UK in the 19th century. They can be found across most parts of England and in some parts of Wales, though their numbers have declined in recent years, perhaps to around 5,000 pairs.
Catch them, perhaps in the sun, while you can.
For more on the ecology of little owls, and efforts to understand their decline in the UK, visit the British Trust for Ornithology.
🔥 Shriek of the Week - LIVE IN LONDON, 2025!
The Rest is Politics recently filled the O2 Arena, while Adam Buxton did two podcast shows at the Royal Festival Hall. 🤔
[rolls up sleeves]
Join me for an early morning on Wimbledon Common in March, to listen for firecrests, thrushes, treecreepers and woodpeckers.
Tickets include lessons for recognising five species ahead of the day. We’ll take a slow walk and tune our ears together for spring.
No crowd-navigation required (our sell-out capacity will be TEN WHOLE PEOPLE).
There’s a £10 discount for those on the paid subscription tier of Shriek of the Week - see separate email, or message me at charlie@birdsong.academy to get the code.
→ For those of you nearer Brighton, there are four places left for the March walkshop in Stanmer Park.
🌱 SHRIEKS NOW WEEKLY
After our go-slow second half to the year, posts are weekly again from the beginning of January until June.
We return to our commonest resident singers, adding new voices as they become more audible during the spring.
Repetition and seasonality are key to recognising bird songs and calls. For those who have subscribed for a while, the posts early in 2025 will be, I hope, HELPFULLY (but possibly eerily) familiar.
As in previous years, I refine and add updates to species accounts from time to time, as well as including new links to what I’m finding to read, follow and get involved with - anything that enriches my, and I hope your, appreciation of nature, and shows how we might protect and rejuvenate the natural world.
Later in the season the regular cycle will be interspersed with new accounts for some species we’ve not tuned into before (requests welcome).
As in 2024, the audio version of each post will be available to everyone, regardless of subscription level.
Thanks to all of you who supported Shriek of the Week over the past year. If you are in a position to do so, support via a paid subscription (£3.50 a month or £25 a year) helps me keep all this going.
A paid subscription also gets you everything in the archive (74 species and counting) plus an invite to the Early Bird Club, our monthly Saturday morning gathering on Zoom where we see what we can see on live cameras around the world, with a cup of tea in hand.
If you’d like to support in other ways, I’m grateful for your ideas, comments and feedback, and to those who recommend Shriek of the Week to friends.
Wishing you a good turn of the year. See you in a few days, when we’ll tune in to the robin’s song again.
🎶
~ Charlie
Media credits:
Little owl recording made near York, England in 2023 by Simon Elliott. Reproduced by kind permission. More details at xeno-canto.
Image of a Little Owl taken at Elmley Nature Reserve, Kent, UK. Credit: Smudge 9000 from North Kent Coast, England, reproduced under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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