"Malcolm Ogilvie" wrote in message
...

In article , Sacha
writes
Our - she says proprietorially - Little Owls are very noisy atm. What
I'm
trying to figure out is why? Surely this can't be a breeding season for
them but there's an awful lot of hollering backwards and forwards going
on.

It doesn't have to be the breeding season for birds to make a noise.
Robins and Dunnocks have been singing in my garden for some while now
and the reason is exactly the same as the Little Owls making a lot of
noise, defending a territory which they will occupy during the winter.
The territory is not for breeding but for feeding. The birds are
defending an area large enough to contain sufficient food for the
winter.


But how do they know the area is going to be large enough? Do they seek to
defend larger or smaller areas depending on the richness of the feeding, or
do they instinctively defend as large an area as they can, regardless of the
terrain?