How brave is a hungry owl?

In Bath, England St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church hosts a peregrine nestbox where The Hawk and Owl Trust runs a falconcam.  The peregrines can be seen on the webcam all year long because they use the nest ledge as a cache area in the off season.

Early last month the webcam picked up night-time activity when a tawny owl(*) discovered the peregrines’ cache.  In the video the owl feasts on leftover pigeon, eventually nervous that he might be seen.  Would the peregrines show up or would they sleep through his visit unaware?

The owl ate his fill without incident and remembered where he’d found this easy meal.  On subsequent nights he raided the pantry again and again until the peregrines got wise to him and stopped caching on the ledge.

The owl still visits and makes a thorough search, just in case. Here he stops by on New Year’s Day.

Oh well.  The party’s over.  There are only so many times you can raid the pantry before the owners stop stocking it!

Thanks to Hawk and Owl Trust for tweeting these cool videos.  Visit their website for more information about the Bath and Norwich peregrines.

(videos from Hawk and Owl Trust, UK)

(*) Tawny owls are Eurasian woodland birds whose closest North American relative is the barred owl.