Patti found this one! Nice cam and prettiest little owl you ever saw! This is a steenuil, or "little owl." Prey is mice & insects - reported to occasionally eat large prey, like a rat! Why, the owl is not much bigger than a rat!

Three cam views available. Here's the link to porch view:
http://77.175.28.154:10083/Steenuil_3.html

Here is more info on Little Owl from the European Owl Pages:

http://www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Athene&species=noctua

Introduction: The Little Owl is a small owl with relatively long legs, short tail, and a rather flat head with no ear-tufts.

[For help with terms used in the description, see parts of an owl. For general characteristics common to most owl species, see owl physiology.]

Description: The facial disc is not well defined, and is greyish-brown with light mottling. There are prominent whitish eyebrows. Eyes are sulphur-yellow to pale yellow, cere is olive-grey and bill is greyish-green to yellowish-grey. Forehead and crown are streaked and spotted whitish. Upperparts are dark brown, with many whitish spots. Flight feathers are barred whitish and dark brown. The tail is dark brown with a few whitish or pale ochre bars. The throat is plain whitish, with a narrow brown collar below. Neck and upper breast is diffusely spotted light and dark. The remainder of the underparts are whitish, boldly streaked dark brown. The belly is plain whitish.
Tarsi are relatively long and feathered whitish. Toes are pale grey-brown and bristled, claws are dark horn with blackish tips.

Size: Length 21-23cm. Wing length 146-181mm. Tail length 68-96mm. Weight 105-260g.

Habits: The Little Owl is most active at dusk, but also partly active by day, and at night. Often roosts by day in dense foliage or openings of holes. Sometimes perches in exposed sites such as fence posts, telephone poles, bare branches or mounds of earth or rocks. When disturbed at roost, it adopts a slim, upright position, then bobs its body up and down. If still threatened, it will fly away, or withdraw into a nearby hole.
When leaving the perch, the owl drops down and flies low over the ground before sweeping up to another perch. Flight is undulating with rapid wingbeats alternating with gliding.
Little Owls are vocally active nearly all year, but especially around the courtship period. Males normally begin to sing at dusk, and are sometimes vocal by day, and can be heard at night during courtship.

Voice: The song of the male is a fluted, nasal gwooihk with an upwards inflection repeated at intervals of several seconds. When excited, the call becomes more cat-like and explosive - kweeo - and is repeated several times. The female call is similar, but higher pitched. Both sexes give a piercing series of shrill yelping notes when disturbed - kwiff-kwiff-kwiff-kwiff...
Likely warning calls include a cackling kekekek and a short kyu. Contact call between the male and female is a soft repeated uhk note.

Hunting & Food: Little Owls feed on insects (mainly beetles and grasshoppers), other arthropods, small reptiles, small frogs, small mammals and birds, as well as earthworms. Prey is normally caught from a perch by swooping down on it. The owl will often hop and move about on the ground in search of food. Surplus food is stored in caches, generally in holes.
Pellets measure 30-40 x 10-19mm.

Breeding: Little Owls are territorial birds. The male sings at different perches in its territory and advertises the potential nesting site by singing near it or from the entrance. This usually starts in February, with main courtship begining in March. The male will often duet with the female during courtship.
The nest can be a natural hole in a tree or pollarded willow, but preferred sites are hollow branches of old fruit trees. Artificial nest boxes are often accepted, also holes or cavities in walls, under eaves, in earth or clay banks of rivers or ravines, in cliffs and in walls of sand-pits, and abandoned mammal burrows in the ground, holes in termite mounds etc.
In Central Europe, egg laying normally occurs from April to mid May. 3-6 white eggs are usually laid at 2 day intervals directly on the bottom of the cavity in a shallow depression created 1-2 weeks earlier. Eggs average 34.4 x 29.6mm. The incubation period begins before the final egg is laid and lasts 22-28 days. The female alone incubates the clutch while being fed by the male. Chicks are blind when they hatch, and open their eyes at 8-10 days old. The female broods them for about a week and feeds them herself with food brought in by the male. Young leave the nest at about 35 days, and are then fed by both parents. They are able to fly at about 38-46 days, and at 2-3 months are independent and ready to leave the parents' territory. Sexual maturity is reached before 1 year.
Normally, only one brood is produced per year, but if food is abundant, double-brooding may sometimes occur.

Mortality: Little Owls may reach an age of about 16 years, but normally do not live that long. Many individuals are hit by vehicles when hunting at night. Severe winters with a lot of snow may also lead to huge losses in some populations.

Habitat: Open country with stands of trees and bushes, rocky country, deserts and semi-deserts with rocks or ruins, oases, pastureland with scattered trees, orchards with old fruit trees, along rivers and creeks with pollarded willows and other trees, parkland, and edges of semi-open woodland. Locally around farmhouses or barns, or sometimes other settlements with surrounding cultivated land with trees. Ranges from sea level to open montane regions; up to 4600m in the Himalayas but normally below 700m in Central Europe. Avoids forest.

Distribution: Eurasia from Iberia north to Denmark, Southern Sweden and Latvia, east to Asia Minor, Levant, Arabia, Central and Eastern Asia to China and Manchuria, south to Northern Africa and Red Sea coast to Somalia and Eritrea. Introduced to Southern Britain and New Zealand South island.

I was surprised to see the Little Owl on the limb today and then it went inside after hearing crows close by. Here's a short video.

Great info r4! I was trying to visualize how little these owls are and from reading the info in the article, these owls are between 8 and 9 inches tall so I started looking around for something that was around that length. A 16 oz. bottle of Diet Coke is 8 1/2 inches tall! WOW! Can you imagine?
Their eggs are only around an inch long and that's about the same size as the opening in a can of diet coke.
(I know some people use rulers to measure things. I use diet coke bottles and cans)

Patti, WOW!!! Great visual! And since we've read these little guys can eat prey as large as a rat can you imagine that diet coke can with a rat chugged down into it???

I opened up the Little Owl site today and there it was again! It stayed inside the box for a long time looking around and preening a little bit then it went outside and hung out on the limb for awhile before it left. A few minutes later it came back but this time it didn't go inside the box. It stayed about 15 minutes on the limb this time before it left again. It's very alert to what's going on around it and above it. I guess it's so tiny it has to always be on guard for predators. I made a couple of videos of it's visit today.

Quote: raptorz4ever wrote in post #6

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Patti, WOW!!! Great visual! And since we've read these little guys can eat prey as large as a rat can you imagine that diet coke can with a rat chugged down into it???

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Glad you saw them, Bunnie! Today it's raining at the Little Owl nest, and not one, but three Little Owls showed up for shelter. These must be juvies we're watching. The three owls moved around in the nest box, searching for tidbits among the shavings, and having active discussions when one was found. There was a whole lot of chirping going on, and an occasional hiss.

Hey! Get outta there. That's not your house! Good thing the door isn't big enough for you.

That bird was a "walker" not a "hopper". Hmmmm.

Okay, pretend you're a Little Owl and you return to your nest one day to find a CAMERA aimed at your nest. Whassup?

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=334384733402917&fref=nf

LOVE that video and those little things noticed it right away! So cute how they come right up to the cam. LOL Thanks r4.

I wonder if this is an adult Little Owl? And whether s/he stays near the nest year-round?

Good Evening, Everyone!