The main part is a video (ca. 5 min)
Jürgen Schneider 07/30/2025July 30, 2025 Across Germany, volunteers are going on patrol to protect owls and their disappearing habitats. Grazing areas often have to make way for new building projects.
In the orchard meadows nestled between Bonn and Cologne, conservation volunteers Andrea Caviezel and Jonas Bode are on summer patrol—checking nesting boxes for little owls, one of the country’s most vulnerable owl species. The carefully placed nesting boxes offer a lifeline to the elusive birds. With food availability and habitat quality playing a major role, successful broods—like the four healthy chicks found during one inspection—signal hope. The chicks are fitted with identification rings so they can be tracked by conservationists. These young owls will soon learn to hunt mice and beetles from low perches, provided the grass remains short and the environment intact.
🌾 Shrinking Habitats, Expanding Efforts
But habitat loss is a key problem for the owls. Prime owl territory is rapidly vanishing. Orchard meadows, once rich habitats, are being cleared for development or left ungrazed—diminishing ideal nesting grounds. Yet, there's progress too: webcams now monitor the nests of Eurasian eagle owls, a species rescued from the brink of extinction in the 1960s. Today, over 850 breeding pairs thrive across Germany thanks to groups like the Society for the Conservation of Owls (EGE). With 75 nesting boxes in the Bonn-Cologne area and half already occupied, long-term conservation efforts are clearly bearing fruit.
🏥 Second Chances Through Rescue and Rehabilitation
But not all owls make it unaided. For orphaned or injured birds, rescuer Dirk Sindhu and his shelter provide crucial care. Each summer, up to 15 birds arrive in need—some pulled from rivers, others found weak and stranded. Using surrogate parent birds, including eagle owls and buzzards, Sindhu ensures chicks are reared with proper instinctual guidance. The highlight comes when a rehabilitated bird—like today’s exhausted buzzard—is released back into the wild. It’s proof that with compassion, tradition, and teamwork, even the most delicate wildlife can take flight again.
This video summary was created by AI from the original DW script. It was edited by a journalist before publication.
Very nice! I had read the article the other day but hadn't watched the video. Since you shared it, I gave it a watch.
The owl houses they made are much different than I was expecting. The banding pliers they used also looked different to the ones I've seen in the US.
I'm glad you posted it to encourage me to watch it. There's always new ways to see people doing things we can learn from.
They showed enough owls to made it worth sharing. I found it interesting that Sindhu didn't use a camo suit while feeding the baby owls. But they didn't mention if that's simply standard when they don't have foster parents or if they won't release these specific owls.
I haven't seen anything that talks about when people use the suit or not.
The raptors I've helped with have all been big enough to eat on their own, they just need the food brought to them or chopped up a bit. We don't really have to hand feed them, we just drop it off and let them eat. The only 2 I hand fed were big enough to eat, they just weren't from stress, so we needed to make sure they still got nutrition.
I'm also not sure why they're just chilling outside in a bucket either, so they might have just filmed this bit to show some babies getting fed and not fussed with other stuff. Since it's not just a single owl, if these ones are kept together, they still are much more exposed to other owls than humans, so less prone to getting confused what they are.
I'll have to see if I can get an opportunity to ask about it more at work this weekend.