Owling

If you have never tried the noble and ancient pastime of owling, then now is the time to give it a go.

All you need for owling is some time at either end of the day - dusk is better for me, but dawn is great too if you can get up - and a walk through fields, hedges and woods and your eyes and ears. And probably best if you aren't scared of the dark, if owling at dusk, because by the time you come back it may well be pretty black.

So what do you do? You simply go out and look out for little owls perched on posts; barn owls hunting over fields and tawny owls calling from the woods. And in particular you listen for the wheezy calls of young owls as they demand more food from their parents.

May is the best month for owling and the countryside around our villages perfect owling territory.

Yesterday for instance I watched a barn owl hunting along the South Drain between Maxey and Helpston at 6am and for the last three evenings I have been watching a little owl that is nesting very close to Helpston itself, the nearest I have ever found them to the village. Its young were calling huskily from a large oak tree.

And finally there is a pair of tawny owls nesting in one of the boxes I put up in Royce Wood, which is at the bottom of our garden. Every evening they are noisily feeding their chicks, you can tell they are around not only by their own wide variety of whoops and yelps, but also by the alarm calls of the neighbouring blackbirds.

And there are plenty more owls out there. So take the opportunity and start owling!