Little Owl

The little owl is called as Athene noctua in scientific terminology. The bird is a native of Asia, Europe and North African geographies. The bird was not present in the Great Britain region but soon got introduced during the 19th century. This species of bird is a part of the owl family which is addressed as strigidae. This is a category which is different from barn owls.
This is a small sized bird which can be up to 27.5 cms in length. The wingspan of the bird while all the wings are open is almost 58 cms. The weights can be as much as 170 grams for a male whereas the female can reach up to 174 gms of weight. For its small size, it is the smallest sized owl in the UK. And they have been closed related to the American owl type. The appearance is quite similar to those of owls. It has wings and the back both in deep grey brown tones and there are continuous spots in white colour. The under parts of the bird is white in colour with broken patterns of those dots. The face has lot of dark areas on it and those deadly eyes are of yellow colour which can frighten anyone with one look.
The bird loves to eat insects, amphibians, earthworms etc, but at times when these easy targets are not available; it can even attack other smaller birds or mammals for its food. The bird has capabilities of diurnal which makes it move during the day time also. They usually hunt during daytimes and active during both dawn and dusk time periods. The species is seen around most of the farming areas of any other similar parks which provides open areas with enough hidings. The bird prefers rocks or trees which have holes in them which make for their safe nesting. After choosing a place for their nest, these can breed and can lay up to 5 eggs in this safe place. The female bird is responsible for taking care of the incubation part. The female does this job for up to 29 days which is what the eggs take to hatch. The owls also make their nests in building, especially the abandoned ones. The bird also has a tendency that it can get used to the human presence and then can get comfortable with that. The bird has the flying patterns which are similar to that of woodpeckers. The young ones of this bird are duller in appearance and do not have white crown spots which are ideally present only on the adults. The calls of the bird are quite sharp and in a kee-ik tone.
Lately its been discovered that the bird had its traces in Britain a long time back but then they suddenly disappeared from there, which calls for more conservation effort. The bird was tried to be introduced unsuccessfully during the years 1814, 1842, 1870s but the main positive thing happened in 1889-90 when these attempts became successful and resulted in release of large number of these owls in Britain.