Eco Hvar

Precious Birds: Saving Owls

The Scops Owl is a welcome visitor to Hvar Island every summer. Arriving between the middle of March or beginning of April its persistent single-note call is the hallmark of the warm season. 

Floof ready to fly... Floof ready to fly... Photo: Norman Woollons

Nature lovers on Hvar often go the extra mile to help creatures in need. In June 2024, when donkey saviour Jana Appleyard was told that a baby bird had fallen from its nest near one of the churches in Dol, she immediately went to the rescue. The tiny bundle of feathers was difficult to identify with certainty, but she suspected it was a Scops Owl, and this later proved to be true. Looking after such a frail, helpless little waif was sure to be challenging, with no guarantee that its life could be saved, but Jana rose to the occasion without hesitation.

Baby Floof, June 2024. Photo: Norman Woollons

The feathery bundle was given the name of Floof, and fed a baby diet of mice, ordered from the mainland and diced into tiny pieces for Floof's little beak. Jana's selfless diligent efforts were supported by Norman, also resident in Dol, who did some thorough research into Scops Owls and their needs, and reported on the baby and ts progress in his widely read blog 'Life in a Dol House'.

Baby Floof, happy in the hand. Photo: Norman Woollons

Floof thrived and quickly started to grow. This made it easier to identify the previously anonymous fluffy bundle of feathers with certainty as a Scops Owl. However, she or he? This question could not be solved, as it would require analysis of the bird's feathers - mission impossible on the island.

Floof, 6th July 2024. Photo: Norman Woollons

The experience of watching baby Floof grow and develop led Norman to the idea that it was the perfect opportunity to ring him/her in order to track his/her future movements, as Scops Owl migrations have not been fully investigated to date. However, organising the ring proved impossible, as the major bird  conservation organisations are based in northern Croatia, too far away to coordinate a ringing mission in mid-summer just for one little bird.

Floof, July 6th 2024. Photo: Norman Woollons

 By July 13th Floof was progressing extremely satisfactorily:

Floof growing up. Photo: Norman Woollons

 No longer a little waif fitting into the palm of a hand!

Measuring up. Photo: Norman Woollons

Although Floof was obviously comfortable being handled and living in human company, the instinct to explore the great world beyond and live a bird's life was obviously growing apace alongside Floof's physical development. Before the end of July 2024, Floof was ready to leave, after only a short apprenticeship experimenting with the art of flying. Having flown to freedom without hindrance, Floof came back to base for a 'flying visit', as if to say 'thanks for everything' and then disappeared off into the distance.

Floof, last picture before flying away. Photo: Norman Woollons

As Norman poignantly put it in his blog dated 13th July 2024: "Human summer visitors to the Mediterranean basin will have heard the almost electronic sounding calls of the Scops. However few will have seen one and fewer still will have had the privilege that I have had of having one like Floof on my hand. I have definitely been Floofed!" Looking back over her relationship with Floof, Jana movingly expressed the fondest emotions: "Ah, dear Floof! It all seems like a dream now! He used to come and have a nap with me and cuddle up. So sweet- I hope I see him again, it was such an amazing experience. Even getting up for his 3am feeds!"

It is also true that even at a remove, this exceptionally lovable bird captured the hearts of everyone who followed the story..

Floof's progress was recorded in some charming videos, courtesy of Hvar Digital / Norman Woollons:
 
The care shown by Jana and Norman was rewarded with success which was enjoyed by the numerous well-wishers who followed Floof's story. Many people on Hvar, native islanders and incomers alike, care about the island's birds and wildlife and are concerned about the species losses which are becoming more evident year on year. Tragically, there are people on the island who have no respect or understanding for the island's natural riches. One example is the long-standing tradition of trapping song-birds during their autumn migration, in order to keep them for the rest of their miserable lives in tiny cages, singing their hearts out mourning for their lost freedom. The practice of trapping wildlife was outlawed some years ago, but some islanders still do it. One Saturday afternoon in November 2023,  tourists walking in the hills came across a little bird caught in a trap 
Caught in an illegal trap. Photo: private album
The helpless victim has been identified by experts as a Long-Eared Owl. One wing was injured, probably in its struggles to break free. The tourists contacted the police in Split, knowing that such a trap contravened European laws for the protection of wildlife. They also freed the bird. The Split police informed their colleagues on Hvar, who immediately went with the local vet to rescue the bird and remove the trap. Eco Hvar was told that the bird survived, but no further details of its fate were forthcoming.
Scops Owl, Dol 2017. Photo: Steve Jones
We are glad that more and more people are demonstrating love and care for the environment with its flora and fauna. Visiting and resident bird lovers follow the activities of the island's birds as a measure of the health of the island. When the Scops Owl departs as autumn looms, the haunting lower-pitched call of the Eagle Owl is one of the rare bird sounds breaking the silence of the night. We hope that Floof will be among the returnees next spring, maybe even visiting the kind friends who saved his/her life in Dol!
Scops Owl, Dol, 2017. Photo: Steve Jones
Note: we are grateful to Jana Appleyard and Norman Woollons for saving Floof, and to Steve Jones for helping to identify the bird caught in the illegal trap.
 
  © Vivian Grisogono MA(Oxon) 2024
back to top
You are here: Home Nature Watch Precious Birds: Saving Owls

Eco Environment News feeds

  • UK records hottest day of year as forecasters warn of more extreme heat

    Temperature reaches 30.5C in Kent as amber health alerts issued before bank holiday temperatures rise

    The UK has recorded its hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures reaching 30.5C in Kent as forecasters warned more extreme heat could follow over the bank holiday weekend.

    The temperature in Frittenden also marked the first time since 2012 the UK has reached 30C in May, according to the Met Office.

    Continue reading...

  • Could nature itself hold the solution to climate change?

    Technological interventions face huge financial or practical challenges, but there is another way

    In 2019, my scientific research was nearly brought to an early end when my team and I published the bombastic statement that natural forest restoration was the “best climate change solution” available in a paper for the peer-reviewed journal Science.

    I remember a colleague from the World Wildlife Fund advising me that this message represented career suicide. He argued that people would be furious because reducing greenhouse gas emissions was the most urgent priority. The revival of nature might help with 30% of our carbon drawdown needs, but you cannot stop rising temperatures without cutting emissions.

    Continue reading...

  • Squeals of horror over price caps – but how are we going to fix our broken food system?

    Global events and the climate crisis have left Britain’s food system dangerously exposed and in desperate need of an overhaul

    The news that the Treasury was asking UK supermarkets to cap price rises on essential foods was greeted with predictable squeals of horror this week. Supermarkets were reportedly “furious”, while luminaries from the former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies to the former chair of M&S could be found harrumphing about the evils of price controls.

    But this caterwauling is a distraction from two unpleasant facts. Firstly, the food price surge over the summer and beyond is likely to be significant – and will come on top of a near-40% rise in the price of food since 2020 – due to a devastating combination of the Iran war and a forecast record-breaking El Niño, which will hammer global food production. And secondly, Britain’s food system is painfully exposed to such shocks. The long-held assumption that a global food system can be relied on to meet the nation’s needs, at a reasonable price, no longer applies.

    Continue reading...

  • Treasury rejected ministers’ plan to cut VAT on public EV charging to 5%

    Department for Transport is understood to back reducing levy, which critics have called a ‘pavement tax’

    Government officials considered cutting the VAT charged on electricity used at public EV chargers from 20% to 5% at the last budget, but the Treasury under chancellor Rachel Reeves rejected the proposal amid disagreement between departments.

    Officials in the Department for Transport encouraged electric car charge point operators to write to the Treasury explaining how they would respond to a VAT cut, according to three industry sources. The charger companies said that they would pass the tax cut on to consumers.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Turn off the juice of the rulers!’ Who are the Volcano Group, mystery saboteurs behind a five-day Berlin blackout?

    Earlier this year, the city was hit by its longest power cut since the second world war. But were those responsible eco-terrorists, agents of the far-right, or even Russian proxies?

    Sebastian Brandt, chief technician of the Immanuel hospital in the leafy, affluent Wannsee district of Berlin, guessed something was wrong as soon as he opened the window of his home and smelled diesel. It was 3 January, a freezing Saturday morning, and luckily the hospital opposite had relatively few patients on this post-holiday weekend. As he looked out, the diesel fumes told him that the emergency generator – a huge, deafening, decades-old machine in the basement – had kicked in. That meant the hospital was no longer getting power from the grid. And that meant Brandt was not going to have a quiet weekend.

    Although an emergency generator keeps a hospital running, it has its limitations. Surgical procedures have to be cancelled, and though generators are tested regularly, no one can be certain what will happen when they are kept running for days on end. The generator tank in the Immanuel hospital contained about 3,000 litres of diesel, and Brandt had calculated it would burn about 550 litres a day; when the grid operator informed the hospital that the outage might last until the end of the following week, Brandt was quickly dispatched to fetch more diesel from the nearest petrol station that was still on the grid. Meanwhile, he’d heard that a neighbouring hospice was going to move its patients to the hospital, too.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘There is no great master plan’: anxiety as UK homes, roads and railways sink into the sea

    Increasing coastal erosion has hit communities’ livelihoods and put lifestyles under threat

    The remains of the road linking two towns in south Devon lie crumbled on the foreshore in a mess of tarmac, steel and concrete.

    The dramatic coastal road, known as the Slapton Line, has an environmentally protected freshwater lake on one side and the sea on the other, and links the towns of Kingsbridge and Dartmouth. But this year, winter storms demolished a section of the A road between Torcross and Slapton, which is at the frontline of rising sea levels and coastal erosion, fulfilling a destiny that was predicted more than 30 years ago, but that has not been prepared for.

    Continue reading...

  • Young country diary: Helping a butterfly into its new phase of life | Ottoline

    Cambridgeshire: It was nearly ready to fly but it was partly out of its chrysalis and partly still in it

    On Sunday morning, I was pottering in the garden wondering what to do. I saw a flapping coming from my wildflower patch, so I went to my clump of clover. I pushed it away, only to reveal a large white butterfly fresh out of its chrysalis. It had been drying its damp wings in the sun.

    Then I realised that part of the butterfly’s chrysalis was still on its wing, and the other wing was already dry and ready to fly. I watched the butterfly for a while. The butterfly tried to get the chrysalis off, but it had used up all its energy. I realised that it needed some help, so I tugged the chrysalis as gently as I could. The butterfly didn’t move but the chrysalis did, so I tugged a little bit harder and off it came.

    Continue reading...

  • Endangered sawfish at risk from plan to double water extraction from WA’s Fitzroy River, advocates say

    The Martuwarra Fitzroy catchment is home to four of the world’s five sawfish species, which rely on large groundwater-fed pools to survive the dry season

    Conservationists fear a government plan to double groundwater extraction from the Martuwarra Fitzroy River catchment in Western Australia could jeopardise threatened sawfish populations.

    The untamed river, which flows 700km through the Kimberley to King Sound, is considered the last stronghold for sawfish globally and is home to four of the world’s five species.

    Continue reading...

  • This US island is home to flora found nowhere else. Now, a wildfire threatens extinction

    Firefighters are racing to douse flames on California’s Santa Rosa Island as experts express concern for unique habitat

    On the south-eastern corner of Santa Rosa Island lies a grove of a few thousand Torrey pine trees, some of them more than 250 years old. The only other place on earth where these gnarled pines exist is in San Diego county, but biologists classify the two groves as different subspecies. So when a rare wildfire broke out on Santa Rosa Island late last week, firefighters raced to keep it from spreading into the grove, where it threatened to consign the island’s Torrey pines to extinction.

    So far, they appear to be succeeding – even as the 18,000-acre fire has torched nearly one-third of the island’s surface. But biologists who have studied Santa Rosa Island’s unique ecology are watching anxiously as the fire continues to burn a part of the island that is home to six plants found nowhere else on the planet.

    Continue reading...

  • Why an immense marine heatwave off the US west coast has alarmed scientists

    What does a surge in ocean temperatures, compounded with El Niño, bode for the summer?

    An enormous marine heatwave off the US west coast is ringing alarm bells among ocean and atmospheric scientists as new data shows its ecological and environmental effects are intensifying.

    The unusual area of warm water has persisted since peaking in size during September 2025 and still stretches thousands of miles from the California coastline – more than halfway across the Pacific – affecting a vast triangle-shaped region of oceanic habitats from Hawaii to British Columbia and southward to Mexico.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2026 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.