AT a recent meeting of Ross Rotary Club, Mike Hill gave a fascinating hands on talk about the aims, aspirations and characters of Hill Top Birds of Prey. He also brought along three of those characters to illustrate his talk, they were Dexter the tawny owl, Whisper the little owl and Rolo the barn owl.

Hill Top near Llangarron is home to 14 birds of prey and includes falcons, buzzards, hawks and an eagle as well as owls.

Among the interesting snippets of information Mike imparted was that tawny owls are responsible for the famous "twit twoo" that's wrongly attributed to all owls. The female call being "twit" and the male response being "twoo". It is the most common owl in Britain with around 50,000 breeding pairs.

Mike also said that in the middle ages barn owls were know as death or demon owls mainly due to their silent flight and ghostly white face. Unfortunately their numbers have been declining throughout the 20th century with only around 4,000 breeding pairs left.

Mike then introduced Whisper, the smallest British owl appropriately called the little owl, which is also in decline with an estimated 5,000 breeding pairs.

He said that the decline in owl numbers was attributable to a number of reasons ranging from loss of habitat to colder, wetter weather and the widespread use of pesticides in the 20th century.

It was an excellent evening getting close to these beautiful birds, but sometimes a little too close when the birds were nervous.

Ross Rotary meets every Monday evening 6.30pm for 7pm at the Chase Hotel. Guests and potential members are very welcome. Please visit the website at rossrotary.com