Meet the Owlets! Baby Tawny Owls Caught on Our Wildlife Camera

Last autumn, we introduced you to our resident pair of tawny owls, Mayweather and Dempsey. The exciting news is that they are breeding, and produced two chicks this spring! With pictures from our wildlife camera, meet our new owlets!

Tawny owls usually mate for life and lay two or three eggs in the spring. This March, our contact from the Barn Owl Trust checked our owl box and found that Dempsey was sitting on two eggs. By April, there were two chicks!

Photo credit: Michael Vann

Mayweather and Dempsey have been busy coming and going with food for their babies!

Owls mainly eat mice and voles, but we’ve captured footage of the owls bringing worms, rodents and even a blackbird to the nesting box.

Owls usually hunt at night, but we’ve also seen footage of the owls coming back to the box with prey during the day.

They’ve been hunting in our broadleaved woodland and neighbouring farmland.

Both parents have been busy hunting for food.

At this point, the owlets are ‘branching’ (leaving the nest to spend several days in surrounding branches) and we’ve been lucky enough to see them in the trees.

The owlets will be independent by the end of autumn, but Mayweather and Dempsey are still involved at this stage. Watch this slowed-down footage of one of the parents buzzing off a cheeky grey squirrel from the box as the baby looks on!

Click the link to meet some of the other animals that live in our woodland!

Find Out More

If you’re interested in conservation and wildlife, we have a blog series on British wildlife and a series on the people and wildlife of South Asia, from the altitudes of the Himalayas to the dense mangrove forests of Bangladesh!

We also offer online private tuition in our interdisciplinary course, Culture and Conservation, in which you can explore the links between our natural and cultural heritage and study wildlife and cultures from across the world! This is a template of a possible study route and can be combined, adapted, or designed from scratch to suit your interests and goals.

Dr. Orton will work with you to design a course of private tutorials tailored to your needs, ability and schedule. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to find out more!

Do More

For those who would like to take action to preserve our wild spaces, there’s plenty you can do. If you're lucky enough to have some land, you could plant a wood from scratch (click the link to read about how we are planting our own native woodland). Even if you don’t have a big garden, there are plenty of things you can do to help biodiversity in your area. Why not put up a solitary bee nesting box or insect home, create a woodpile as a habitat for small creatures or leave small areas of your garden to go wild?

Think about your own area and how you can protect vulnerable but important parts of your own environment. You might even want to start your own project investigating the cultural importance of wildlife in your area. Dr. Orton works with independent scholars undertaking their own research for an independent project, people writing a book or simply those who have a personal interest. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to get started!

Reach Out

We’d love to see what you’re doing to help wildlife in your area. Follow the Conservation highlight reel on the Orton Academy Instagram to see what we’re getting up to and tag us in to any snaps you put up!