When I first commuted over Buckhaw Brow, between my home at Giggleswick and the Dalesman office at Clapham, black rabbits gavorted on the grassy area leading up to the limestone scars. Later, I came under the unblinking stare of owls.

These were the so-called little owls, not only small but having flattened heads giving them a comical appearance.

A pair of owls had "squatted" in one of the rabbit burrows. In due course, I saw young owls standing gravely at the entrance to the burrow, waiting for dusk, when their parents would go food-hunting.

I mentioned the owls to Bill Shuttleworth, the Earby farmer who was an authorised ringer of birds, placing light alloy rings on the legs of nestlings so that a check might be kept on their travels. Bill duly arrived. To him, an owl in the hand was worth two in the burrow. In due course, we handled both chicks before slipping them back into the hole.

It was Charles Waterton, a West Riding man, who first introduced little owls to this country. Waterton, an eccentric squire, converted his Wakefield estate into a nature reserve and lived at Walton Hall, which stands on an island.

In 1842, Waterton brought five little owls back from Italy but a Yorkshire winter proved too much for birds that hatched out in a much warmer clime. Dutch birds, introduced later in the century, were resilient. Soon, little owls were being recorded in Yorkshire.

Nothing goes amiss to a hungry little owl. It gobbles down beetles and earthworms, does not turn up its beak at moths, and when especially hungry or having young to feed, will dine on larger birds such as pigeons and also young rabbits.

Though small, it has a fearsome disposition and talons that exert a vice-like grip on prey. It meets its match when moving into the territory of a pair of tawny owls which soon remove the opposition by taking the young birds.

A little owl perched like a feathered totem is only marginally less appealing than the sight that greeted me of two young sitting cheek by jowl on a fencing post, their large and brilliant eyes staring at me intently.

In contrast with the little owl is the "moss owl", to use an old Dales name for the short-eared variety. This long-winged bird, unlike most owls, is a daytime hunter, gliding on long wings. I am delighted to hear that a stock of fell-going sheep at Cam Houses has been sold by the owner of Cam Farm and that he will concentrate on managing the land with conservation objectives.

He will doubtless find a pair of short-eared owls in this remote area, the gathering ground of becks that feed the eastward-flowing Wharfe and the westward-flowing Ribble. Years ago, with Stan Lythe, of Grassington, I came face-to-face with owls at their nest, which was within sight of the huddled buildings of Cam Houses.

Early that springtime, we had watched a short-eared owl circling and wing-clapping. The long wings were brought together, beneath the bird's body, with a sound that carried far. Stan had permission to photograph the birds. Showing great patience, he located a nest in an area of rush-bobs.

The hide he erected was eventually standing a few yards from where the young birds were crouched on a ground nest and the parent birds provided a shuttle-service with rodent food.

Incidentally, the ear tufts from which this owl gets its name have nothing to do with hearing. They are erected only when the bird is alarmed or excited which, happily, was not the case when I watched from the hide. They accepted it as part of the scenery.

I was lucky. Within a short time of my vigil, the nestlings - as yet unable to fly - were dispersed and the parents were feeding them at various points on the moor.

Owls are usually associated with the gloaming. Derek Bunn, a Lancashire naturalist who with Tony Warburton wrote a monograph about barn owls, used a forested area of the upper Hodder valley as his special study area.

His main hiding tent was set up beside a plantation and overlooked a glade in which stood an outbarn. The owls were entering it through the old forking-hole at the gable end during a long nesting season.

One summer evening, as clouds of midges danced in beams of sunlight, the owlets stimulated their parents to hunt for food by giving hunger calls that sound just like snoring. It was not easy for the human observer to stay awake in such conditions.

The hunting owls, ghostly white in the last of the daylight, returned from their forays with voles they had plucked from the forest "rides" and adjacent pastureland. The sound made by the owlets rose to fever pitch in anticipation of a feast.

Soon, the young birds - shining white in their new plumage - were greeting their jaded parents on the ledge of the forking-hole. There was a tussle for food.

When the owlets first flew, they alighted on the roof of the hide I was occupying. Looking up, I saw the talons showing through the hessian a foot or so above my head.

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