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Tawny owlets are known to fledge early before they can fly properly and often ending up on the ground. Normally, you don't need to intervene and the owlet can be left where it is. The main thing is not to remove it from the area unless it's smaller than your fist or in clear danger by a road or footpath, for example, or it's visibly injured. If you are concerned, I'm going to explain what you can do next. This is quite typical. It's just before dusk and the tawny owl has come out of these trees and landed on the grass here. But what we're going to do is just look around us, check where the adults are.
I can actually hear blackbirds alarm calling, so I know the adults are in these trees. Um so, if we're concerned about it there, put our hat up, hat on, glasses on, and then we'll catch this owl. Well, this clacking that the chick's doing now can trigger an attack response from the adults. It's quite rare that happens, but it can happen. So, I'm coming away from the trees to give this owl a bit of a health check. I kind of know it's all right cuz it was flying a little bit earlier, doing little flutters, but what we do here is just check these wings and you can see that wing just snaps back into place and the same again with the other one.
Just check the wings that there's no uh obviously, we're checking for no breakages or sprains or twists here. And the feet, I can just tell by the way it's been fighting uh made his feet are okay. But again, what we're just going to do is to check its feet, find the ground, and just check it's gripping nicely. There, you can see it's gripping at the ground. So, that confirms this owl is really healthy. It's just ended up on the ground. Now, you can find them much, much smaller than this. And quite often they're actually okay if they're just simply popped in a tree or ideally back into the nest. But usually they just fall back out again. And another thing
comment to those comments that I get is they've got uh orange or pink rims around their eyes. Well, let's have a close look at an owl's eye. That's very normal. And that's just part of the actual owl. People say quite often that the ankles here are uh bald and have no fur feathers on them. Again, this is normal cuz when they're chicks they sit on their uh haunches so to speak in the nest. This is how we handle the owl. Fingers here like this and then thumb over the top. And I'm just holding that I'm not holding it tightly. I'm not squeezing the air out of it. I'm just holding it just to keep control of it. And the other thing that happens with owls, they
don't always act like this one. This one's got a bit of fight about it. It struggles a little bit. Some owls sort of pretend to be dead. So, this is obviously a tawny owl. And if you find young barn owls on the ground, that's a completely different story there. Because if there's other owl that's still in the nest, the adult owls will generally tend to feed um the owlets in the nest and ignore the one on the ground. Whereas tawny's are very different. They'll actually feed uh their owlets actually on the ground. And uh sometimes you find them at the base of a tree. And then there's a lot of prey around the owlet. And uh so, that's an owlet that's been fed.
It's just got a little bit of dirt in its nostril. Get rid of that. There we go. Right, I'm going to get this one back into the tree. Um but yeah, don't get too concerned if you find an Owlette. They all end up on the ground at some stage. And quite often they all end up wet at some stage if the weather's bad. Uh but this is just normal tawny owl life. They fledge very early. Um this one probably fly can fly relatively well at this stage. But quite often they fledge in well before they can uh well before they can actually fly properly. And they just hop from branch
to branch. Uh but yeah, it's time to get this one back in the tree. All right, then. So, I have this Owlette. And what I'm going to do is put it somewhere here where it can um actually just fly straight away. So, hopefully, I'm going to pop it on here. Let it settle. Let it stop struggling. And look at it go. Straight up a vertical tree trunk. So, that just shows how capable these Owlettes are. They look fluffy and vulnerable, but that's going to pull them up the vertical tree trunk there up into the canopy. But that's one good deed done for today. And I'm sure it'll be fine now. After watching this, if you're still concerned, contact your local wildlife rehab center.
