Country diary: I enjoy the company of a female tawny owl as I garden

Allendale, Northumberland: Birds are thought to recognise people's faces, so perhaps she trusted my movements and gesturesThe first sign that our owl box was being used was the intermittent calling of a female tawny during the day. A male, occasionally hooting from the wood across the river, would sometimes be answered by her muted kee-wick. It is females alone that incubate eggs and stay with the chicks until they have fledged. Living so close to the house, she would be able to hear my feet on the gravel path, our voices and other everyday sounds.The nest box, a tall chimney shape suggesting a hollow tree trunk, has been fixed to the sycamore for a while now. It took some years for it to be accepted, but this is the third time it has been occupied. Hearing an alarmed flurry of small birds, I reached for my binoculars, and there was a female owl on a weathered sycamore branch, its surface scuffed and peeling from her sharp talons. The symmetry of her face resembled a vertical slice through an apple. Her feathers were a pattern of buff and light brown, like the shadows of leaves that float across a branch. Continue reading...