Mysterious calls in Carpathians
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Since the last year’s spring evening walks on owl calls met with positive reactions, we decided to put these walks also to our schedule this year. Our evening walks were targeted on Tawny Owls (Strix aluco). In comparison to the last year, when the forests were still covered in snow, birds started to sing earlier and first spring flowers are already in bloom now.
Owls in general belong to species that can be heard and breed very early in the beginning of the year. Males can be very loud and their typical hoot can be heard from a distance of several kilometers. They keep an eye on their territories and try to attract females. Females are responding with short screech. They become silent, when they lay eggs in the nest and begin to incubate them. Despite this year’s walks were scheduled two weeks earlier in comparison to the previous yea,r we assume that some females are already sitting in their nests.
Pleasant spring provided very good conditions for the observation of Tawny Owls. We recorded several calling owls during the evening walks in the forests of Železná studnička (recreational area in Bratislava). To our delight we also observed a few of them on both of our guided walks.
Many of the participants have spotted their first owl ever in their lifes. We are glad for high interest of this unusual nature exploration. We hope that this nice experience will encourage participants of our walks to further explorations in their surroundings.
