Owls on the Isle of Man
A plantation owl, a night hag, and a tawny owl story that turned out to be more complicated than we were told.
Manx BirdLife’s website blocks automated reading, so the Manx BirdLife facts on this page were checked against search-engine extracts of its pages, not the full pages. Every one links to the page it came from.
Long-eared owl: the island’s owl
The long-eared owl has long been the Isle of Man’s commonest owl, as it is in Ireland, where tawny owls are absent. source Manx Wildlife Trust: long-eared owls are regular breeders on the Isle of Man. source
In 1924 a Manx writer noted that “the handsome long-eared owl inhabits many of our plantations” and that barn owls seemed scarce. Manx Note Book Manx BirdLife says conifer reforestation brought the occasional crossbill and long-eared owl. Manx BirdLife
The long-eared owl is on Schedule 1 in Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. source
Barn owl: caillagh oie
The Manx name for the barn owl is caillagh oie, “night hag”. Manx BirdLife Barn owls are rare on the Isle of Man, with fewer than 10 known breeding pairs. Manx BirdLife
In 2019 the project estimated 10 to 12 pairs. source In 2019 the project director told IOM Today that barn owls were reintroduced to the island about 40 years earlier, after being considered extinct in the wild there. This is a newspaper quote, not a published study. source This is a quote reported in a newspaper; we couldn’t find a primary source for the reintroduction.
The Manx Barn Owl Project, run by Manx BirdLife with Manx Wildlife Trust’s Farmland Birds Officer, installs nest boxes and monitors breeding. Manx BirdLife Manx barn owls forage mainly in rough, ungrazed grassland. Manx BirdLife The island’s wet climate is hard on barn owls. source
Threats to Manx barn owls include habitat loss, roads, modern buildings with no nest spaces, and falling prey numbers. DDT was a past cause of decline. Manx BirdLife On the Isle of Man, barn owls are protected under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Act 1990. Manx BirdLife
The last comprehensive assessment of Manx barn owls was the Manx Bird Atlas (Sharpe et al. 2006), so sightings help. Manx BirdLife Manx owl records are treated as sensitive. Please don’t share nest locations publicly. Manx BirdLife
“No tawny owls on the Isle of Man”?
This is often repeated, and our own brief said it too. Here’s what the sources actually say, oldest first:
- Historically, the Isle of Man had no tawny owls. A 1924 Manx account says “the tawny owl, as in Ireland, absent.” Manx Note Book
- The Barn Owl Trust lists the tawny as absent from islands including the Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Northern and Western Isles and Scillies, and suggests it is unwilling or unable to make short sea crossings. Barn Owl Trust
- Martin & Mikkola (2014), citing the 2007–11 Bird Atlas, say tawny owls have bred on the Isle of Man, where they were formerly absent. Martin & Mikkola
- But Manx BirdLife’s 2021 conservation assessment lists tawny owl among species that have nested only occasionally, with no definite or probable breeding records from 2006 onwards. Manx BirdLife
- Manx BirdLife now says small populations of tawny owl “appear to have become established in recent years.” Manx BirdLife
Our reading: tawny owls were historically absent from the Isle of Man, and that’s why the old claim exists. They have bred there since, and Manx BirdLife now describes small, apparently established populations. But its own 2021 assessment had no confirmed breeding from 2006 onwards, so how many there are, and how settled they are, is genuinely uncertain. “Rare and recent” is fair. “None” is not.
The tawny owl is absent from Ireland, probably because of competition from the long-eared owl. source
Other Manx owls
Manx BirdLife’s 2021 BoCCIoM was the first conservation assessment of Manx birds: 166 of the 332 species on the Manx list were assessed. Manx BirdLife Short-eared owls pass through Britain and Ireland in winter (In winter, short-eared owls from Scandinavia, Russia and Iceland arrive in Britain. source), but we couldn’t check Manx BirdLife’s species pages, so we haven’t listed Manx status for other owls.