Listening for tawny owls in late winter woods

Why tawny owls call more in late winter

By mid-January, a British wood can feel like a place holding its breath. The leaf litter is soaked, the canopy is bare, and the summer chorus is months away. What changes is not the volume of the wood but the kind of sound in it — and from about now, the most reliable voice in the dark belongs to the tawny owl.

Tawnies hold territory all year and often pair for life, but their calling peaks in the weeks before nesting. Egg-laying usually begins in early March, sometimes late February in mild southern counties, so late January and February are the loudest window of the entire year. Males are reasserting boundaries, pairs are renewing bonds, and both birds are more willing to sit still and call from a familiar perch. Stand quietly at dusk for twenty minutes and you have a genuine chance of hearing them almost anywhere there are mature trees — and, with practice, of knowing which bird you are listening to.

Telling the two voices apart

The classic "twit-twoo" is not one owl. It is two, duetting.

• The male's hoot is the deep, quavering "hooo — hoo-hooo", roughly two seconds long, with a noticeable wobble in the middle. It carries a long way and is usually delivered from a regular song post.
• The female's "kew-wick" is the sharp, slightly hoarse note that often answers him — the "twit" in the phrase. It rises at the end and sounds almost annoyed.
• Pitch is the giveaway. The male sits lower, around the depth of a distant bass hum. The female, when she hoots rather than kews, sounds thinner, higher and less steady.
• Young birds from the previous year may still be around, giving a wheezy, breathy begging call that is easy to mistake for something else entirely.

Learn the male hoot first. Once you can pick it out, the female's answers start appearing in the gaps, and a wood that seemed empty suddenly has at least two owls in it.

Choosing your wood and your night

Habitat matters more than luck. Look for mature broadleaved woodland with old oaks, ash, beech or sycamore, some standing deadwood, and open rides where birds can hunt at the edges. Churchyards, parkland and old hedgerow oaks all work, too — tawnies are tolerant of people and remarkably urban in places.

• Weather: pick a calm, dry night with a light breeze at most. Wind masks calls and rain drowns them completely. Drizzle is fine; a gale is not.
• Timing: arrive twenty to thirty minutes before sunset. Calling often begins at dusk and can drop off again within the hour.
• Moon: a bright moon helps you see silhouettes; a dark night helps you hear. Either will do.
• Access: check whether your wood has any dusk closures or a permit system, and stick to the paths.

Standing still: the practical bit

Listening is a skill of restraint. Put your back lightly against a big trunk — owls sometimes take a motionless human for a stump and carry on. Set your feet, then stop moving. Do not shuffle, do not lean on fences that creak, and keep gravel and crisp packets out of the equation.

Phone in your pocket, screen off. If you need light, use a red filter on its lowest setting. Cup your hands behind your ears to gather sound and turn your head slowly rather than your whole body. Your hearing genuinely sharpens after about ten minutes of silence, so give it that time before deciding the wood is quiet.

Leave the recordings at home. Playing calls back pulls birds off their normal routine and costs energy they can ill afford before breeding. Keep thirty to fifty metres from any bird that is calling, and if it falls silent as you approach, you are close enough already.

What else is awake in the dark

The owl is the headline act, but late winter woods are busier than most people realise.

• Foxes are at their most vocal now; the vixen's blood-curdling shriek in January and February is a mating call, not a death cry.
• Muntjac bark like hoarse dogs, and roe and fallow deer move quietly along rides.
• Badgers emerge from setts to snuffle through the leaf litter.
• Woodcock begin roding from mid-February, grunting and squeaking over open ground at dusk.
• Wood mice, bank voles and shrews rustle in the litter — the tawny owl's staple diet, and the reason it can afford to nest so early.
• Bats mostly stay torpid, though a mild night may bring one out.

Woodcraft and safety after dark

Tell someone where you are going and when you expect to be back, carry a head torch with a red setting, and keep to the paths — roots and rabbit holes trip people more often than anything else does. Take a companion for your first few evenings, keep dogs on leads, and leave gates as you find them.

Above all, treat a calling owl as a piece of good fortune rather than a target. If you can hear both voices trading calls across a ride, you have found a pair holding territory they may use for years. Stand still, say nothing, and let the wood do the talking.