Little Owl Facts

The aptly named Little Owl is Britain’s smallest owl. Of our five breeding owls, four are native to Wales, the exception being this owl. The Little Owl was introduced by Lord Lilford to Britain in 1842 and first appeared in Wales in Glamorganshire in the 1860s. It was rare enough on Anglesey in 1900 to warrant a special note in the issue of The Zoologist for that year and only became properly established in the 1920s.

The Little Owl rapidly spread despite wholesale slaughter by gamekeepers who accused it of living almost entirely on pheasant and grouse chicks. However, one of the earliest studies carried out by the British Trust for Ornithology showed that the bulk of its diet was insects, including some that are serious pests to the farmer, so it is now protected like all our native owls. Its diet consists mainly of large insects, earthworms and a few small mammals.

It is an unusual example of an introduced species which has neither died out (as did the mountain hare when it was introduced into Snowdonia at the beginning of the century) nor has it multiplied out of control (as has the grey squirrel since it was first introduced to Wales from America at about the same time).