page_title: Tawny owl
section_title: Behaviour
hierarchical_section_title: Tawny owl / Behaviour
caption_attribution_description: Tawny owl at night
context_page_description: The tawny owl or brown owl is a stocky, medium-sized owl commonly found in woodlands across much of the Palearctic. The tawny owl is a member of the genus Strix, that is also the origin of the family's name under Linnaean taxonomy. Its underparts are pale with dark streaks, and the upperparts are either rufous, brown or grey. Several of the eight recognised subspecies have each of the main colour variations. This nocturnal bird of prey hunts a wide variety of prey species, but usually primarily takes small mammals such as rodents. Tawny owls usually hunt by dropping from a perch to seize their prey, which they typically swallow whole. In more urban areas, its diet includes a higher proportion of birds, while in arid subtropics many invertebrates such as insects are taken. Other important prey can include frogs with other vertebrate prey taken fairly rarely. Vision and well-developed hearing adaptations combined with silent flight aid its night hunting. The tawny owl is capable of catching smaller owls, but is itself vulnerable to larger raptors, like eagle-owls or goshawks.
context_section_description: The tawny owl is generally quite nocturnal, but are sometimes briefly active during daylight. This is usually the case when young have to be fed and male owls may need to be active continuously for up to 11 hours in order to obtain enough prey. In a probably exceptional event, some tawny owls were observed to mix with a flock of black-headed gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) in extracting earthworms on a plowed field in England in broad daylight. Of the three European owls in the Strix genus, the tawny is by far the least prone to be active during daylight. Nocturnal activity by tawny owls starts on average 18–22 minutes earlier and ends on average 10 minutes later than that of nearby long-eared owls. Radio study in Monks Woods, revealed that upon nightfall, males nesting in continuous woodland spent 40% less time flying, covering an average distance of 74.9 m (246 ft) per hour, than those nesting in farmland, which covered an average of 148 m (486 ft) per hour. The males would perch for about 8 minutes on average. These owls may roost by day amongst dense foliage, quite often on a branch close to the trunk, or in a natural hole in a tree or rock formation, in a hole or crevice of a wall. They at times will make use of manmade perches in suburban areas, such as utility poles, peaked roofs, chimney pots, tall fences, billboards or television antenna by dusk, while during the day they often tuck away in hollies, evergreens, oaks and/or thick ivy. On occasion, they may found roosting even in the attics of large buildings, barns or sheds, inside church towers or the chimneys of houses. One may be able to locate tawny owls by looking for whitewash but, unlike long-eared owls, tawny owls changes perch sites with some regularity so they tend to be less detectable overall. Often finding tawny owls during daylight is done by listening for noisy mobbing of a discovered owl by other birds, especially by large and/or bold passerines, or by squirrels during the day. Usually, the often fairly drowsy owls are unable to counterattack or kill their wary tormentors and may at times depart and try to seek out another roost. A radiotelemetry study of 22 owls in Denmark researched the effect perch use has in mitigating potential mobbings or predation acts. It was found that juveniles were more likely to use to secluded, hidden roosts whereas adults with hatched young through independent young were more likely to perch in the open apparently to protect their offspring. Adults were more likely to perch in open and closer to the ground when prey supplies were lower than were they were not. Though this is generally a quite cold-hardy species, a study near the northern limits of the species range in central Norway showed that due to thermoregulation that the owls locally had to compensate for the climate by conserving energy via incremental feeding activity.
caption: Tawny owls are quite nocturnal.
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