Small but mighty: How can you not love the little owl?

Any British lover of owls would be forced to admit that these islands are not the best place for the family. Whereas Germany has nine different species and Sweden 10, poor old Blighty holds five — and, had it not been for a few ‘reckless’ Victorian landowners, the total here would have been a paltry four.

In the 1870s, there was a guerilla campaign among various ‘owlophiles’, notably in Kent and Northamptonshire, to add a previously unrecorded species. We often come to rue these ‘exotic’ introductions, especially invasive organisms such as Japanese knotweed, Himalayan balsam and American mink, but the little owl surely stands in a completely different category, given that it has lived among us for 150 years with remarkably little adverse impact on our native fauna.

As with several other introduced species — the brown hare, rainbow trout and sweet chestnut tree — we have welcomed the pocket-sized newcomer as truly one of our own.

Its presence has also added something rather special to our otherwise sombre owl quartet: an element of comedy. Little owls stand barely 9in tall and weigh only 6oz. At any distance they look like grey-brown balls, freckled white. One striking feature is the pair of enormous white ‘eyebrows’ that encircles the entire head so that even as the bird faces away, it can appear as if it is staring straight at you. These brows may have a protective function, giving a possible predator the impression that it is being carefully watched.

What little owls lack in physique they more than compensate with fierce character. It is not uncommon to chance upon a bird in broad daylight. There it stands, on a telegraph pole, towering over you, yellow eyes glaring. Its head bobs and leans sideways as the owl adjusts focus, as if it were weighing the moment, calculating perhaps if it could tackle prey as large as the creature beneath. Then, away it bounds, like a blunt-nosed missile and from some distant retreat utters a series of mournful piping notes — peeuu, peeuu, peeuu.

Humans may not be part of their diet, but little owls have been recorded to take animals as elusive as bats, as large as rabbits or magpies, as combative as weasels and as intractable as hedgehogs. Their principal food, however, is invertebrates, especially beetles, with worms another proven favourite. A bird will occasionally pull on the annalid’s ‘tail’, leaning back the better to haul it from the earth; and should the latter give up suddenly, the owl has been known to fall over onto its back.

A real test of our affection for this non-native species has been issued recently because it has suffered steep, rather mysterious declines. These are all the more perplexing because, following the first Victorian releases, the owls spread rapidly and, by the 1930s, had colonised Cornwall and as far north as Co Durham and Cumbria. Although they threatened further advances into Scotland, little owls settled down until the end of the 20th century over much of the English and Welsh countryside.

The birds are often linked with an older kind of countryside, such as orchards or parkland, with old boundary trees, overgrown hedges or derelict buildings in which they can nest. However, the species has now retreated from many parts of South-West England, as well as Wales. Today, there may be no more than 3,600 pairs, although wildlife groups offer support, with nest boxes designed to attract little owls and exclude other hole-nesting competitors.

One place where British holidaymakers may have seen the bird, if only subliminally, is in Greece, where it is a cultural symbol. It is even on the country’s €1 coin, a tradition that draws on links with the ancient goddess Pallas Athene, whose connections to the Greek capital are embedded in their shared name. She was represented in bird form as an owl, just as Aphrodite was linked to doves and Zeus to eagles. Her status as the goddess of wisdom helped to establish the links between all owls and wisdom. She also gave this species its apt scientific name Athene noctua. The little owl is truly a little goddess by night.