Williamsons weekly notes July 22 2009

They were wailing together with a sort of soft whistle, reminiscent of the call of a golden plover. Their big yellow ringed eyes made me jump. I was just a few feet away, but they didn't budge. So I left them alone, feeling surprised I had not even known about the parents breeding in the wood.

However that is not surprising. About 20 pairs of long-eared owls are known to breed in Sussex but there may be many more. They are quite secretive birds and they do not make the noises you generally associate with night musicians '“ the hoots and tu-wits and long quavering love calls we get from the tawny owl.

The long-eared has a wide vocabulary even so. For example, it might squeal like a rabbit or a rat which has just seen a stoat and knows its end is nigh. It might go one step further and copy the pig.

Water rails are good at this too though you never see them at it.

Perhaps this sound is more suggestive of a cat wauling, almost like the voice of a little owl. Our long-eared friend can also growl like a cat when it has the mind, and why not you might think as in some ways it looks vaguely like one with its big ringed eyes, feather tufts like real ears, round face, and soft furry-feathers.

The bird can also make the baying of a hound when this is heard half a mile away in the woods. The call I've most often heard in the double hoot "hollowa" which is repeated over and over.

Bird watchers have been attacked by the owl in defence of the young when they have said it growls, wriggles its body about like a snake, snaps its beak with a loud crack like castanets and hisses loudly.

Sometimes it will land on the ground and look like a hob goblin, or a small brown goat, extending its feathers like horns. The mottled ginger and brown plumage can then give one the appearance that a small lynx is crouching there with ears fully up, ready to spring.

Try getting near owlets and unlike tawny owls they will peck, hiss, click and attempt to detach your finger tip.

Outside the breeding season they sit quietly against the trunk of a spruce or pine. You may be as lucky as I was back in the 1960s to see continental immigrants near the coast, all perching together in the same elderberry bush. Fifty-two of them were there on the seawall in Essex, tired after their North Sea excursion from Norway.

A century ago they were much in demand in the glass case. No less than 21 were brought to one taxidermist between 1904-8 in Horsham.

These were the perfect specimens, many others too damaged to be any use. A pity, as these owls are great ratters.