Tawny owl  

Strix aluco

This tawny owl is (nick)named 'Beks owl'.  Derived from the country lane named 'Bekslaan' near the village of Vogelenzang in the Netherlands. A beautiful lane lined on both sides by rows of majestic century+ old beech trees. It is in two of those trees that a tawny owl couple has its favorite year-on-year nesting sites.

They deserve to be nick-named as they attract wide and warm attention from the locals and even spotter-purpose visitors. Granted unsollicited celebrity status by passionate birders/nature photographers and by onlookers curious to see what these telelenses and binos are pointed at.

Nest sites

Over their century+ long lifes, the massive beech trees have stood firm in many a Westerly storm, which blast the Dutch coast with some regularity.  Several trees have lost in the past some of their thick lower branches, either by storm or otherwise by human chainsaw amputation. At these places, decades of wood rot have carved deep hollows into the trees inner core wood. Perfect hollows for medium-large sized birds to nest. The tawny owl is one of them but this couple surely are not the only ones. They have to compete and battle every year with other contending 'hole-house' hunters. The most persistent and irritating (from the owl's point of view) are the locally common jackdaws. The latter individually surely is overpowered and outcompeted by the owl's size and beak&tallons weaponry. The jackdaws retalliate in numbers as they collectively try to flock-flush the owl out of it's property. Succesfully so, now and then.
 

Tawny oil nestling, nearly full-grown. Attentively peaking at the unfamiliar object/intruder (photographer) below.

Location: Vogelenzang (NL), Bekslaan, July 2,  2017 

Tawny owl - daytime nap

Trying a photo shoot of the nestling tawny owl is ultra straightforward. Upon arrival, it guaranteed sits there in it's hollow. Like a proverbial 'sitting duck' begging to be shot (shuttered).  The challenge and frustration is that during the daytime, it sits there for the very most of time motionless with its eyes closed. Its sleepy head tilted back on its fluffy shoulder feathers. It is a bit like safari shooting resting lions after a very copious meal. Lying bodies stuffed into plain-dead inmobility for countless hours.
So after setting up the camara and tripod gear under its tree, the shooting game was up to luck and patience. No hope of daytime parental feeding with Tawny mom and dad guaranteed sound asleep elsewhere in the neighbourhood. 

The below images illustrate that persistence and patience got awarded a few times. Once by some sudden short pruning of its feathers. A next time, by young Tawny briefly turning its head left and right with it's coal-black eyes wide opened.  After a short stare though, it resumed its favourite dozing still live position.

Ringed ancestor

The above photos were taken in 2016/2017.
In the rather cold winter of 2010, I found a dead Tawny owl in the same wooded area. In cold winters, owls are vulnerable to starvation as their most important sustaining prey (wood mice) gets harder to catch .

The bird was ringed and, curious about its origin, I took the ring home and had it registered in the online Dutch ringstation records ('Griel Vogeltrekstation Nederland'). It was born and ringed in 2005, just 2 kilometres to the North.

So it may well have been an unlucky (starved) ancester of the above 'tawnies'. By the way, luckier tawnies are reported to get as old as 20+ years.

2018

Also this year the pair re-took possession of their last-year's beech residence.