A Scops Owl calls from the garden giving the evening a real Mediterranean feel once more…
It’s the first week of August and with the household out for the evening I’m grabbing the chance to catch up on my posts. With the patio doors open behind me dusk has brought the usual hum of crickets up from the terraces…but some of the local insects won’t make it through the night.
There’s a Scops Owl in the garden this evening…the familiar “tyuh” call ringing out every two or three seconds, sounding for all the world like some rather persistent electronic alarm. It’s a common sound at dusk in villages and woodland right round the Mediterranean through the summer months, but tracking these diminutive little owls down to their chosen perch can sometimes be a bit of a challenge.
With a body length smaller than a Blackbird they are easily overlooked but a good view can sometimes be had when they wait near streetlighting for moths and other invertibrates. Largely migratory over most of its southern European range, some over winter here in southern Spain but for me their unmistakable, whistling little call is one of the sounds of summer. Here’s hoping we’ll be hearing them for a good few weeks yet!
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