Long-eared Owl

Identification

The Long-eared Owl is a slim, upright, woodland-coloured owl with tall ear tufts set close together and orange-yellow eyes set in a facial disc bordered by a dark rim and a pale brow line. Its plumage is finely dark-streaked brown and buff, so intricately patterned that a bird pressed against a trunk in a dense conifer is almost impossible to see. The key separation from the Tawny Owl is that combination of tall tufts and orange eyes, backed by a slender build, a longer tail and narrower wings.

By night it hunts in open country and along woodland edge, flying low and slow on buoyant wings and listening for voles and mice with hearing accurate enough to catch prey moving under snow or thick grass. In winter the Long-eared Owl is unusually sociable: birds gather in communal roosts, sometimes a dozen or more in one clump of conifers, often sharing with birds that hunted separately all summer. Song is a single soft 'hoo' repeated every two or three seconds, and chicks beg with a loud creaking squeak that sounds like an unoiled gate.

Roosts are the best chance of a look: find a dense stand of conifers or a thick evergreen hedge, then check the ground beneath for pellets and splash — the pellets are grey and packed with vole fur. Once found, birds may sit tight and appear to be part of the branch. In autumn and early winter listen at dusk for the rhythmic 'hoo'; wing-clapping display flights also give them away over open fields.