It was early April. The last of the snowdrops were fading away with only green leaves to remember them. The crocuses were looking a little sad with their fragile heads shriveled, dry and drooping, the wild daffodils were covering the field in drifts, their yellow heads on short stems waving in the breeze, and the domestic daffodils, more commonly seen but not so delicate, much taller and more flamboyant, were in full bloom. The sun was beginning to have a little warmth in its early morning rays, the days were longer, the garden birds starting to sing insistently. The wild Buzzards were calling their remote mewing cry and diving and stooping at one another in dramatic display flights. Male wood pigeons were speeding around the sky, with their clapping flight impressing the lady wood pigeons, who were sitting in the trees watching and preening, but mostly ignoring them. The males would occasionally stop flying around and start fighting in a rather less impressive manner, often scrapping in trees and falling through to the ground, much to the interest of some of the falcons and eagles who lived in the Hawk Walk below, and were, during the day sitting on their perches beneath those trees on the lawns.

Spring was definitely here.

A huge eagle owl was sitting still and silent on her nest, a tiny insistent tapping noise made her look down and peer at the eggs beneath her. The noise was so quiet, only she could hear it.

The tapping continued, with pauses between as the ‘egg’ rested and regained energy. Inside the egg, after 35 days of incubation, was an owl chick, who was quite determined to be outside the egg. His only tool was a very small, fairly sharp little ‘tooth’ of calcium on the tip of his beak, with which to escape from his round prison. To hatch successfully he had to keep pushing his head backwards towards the blunt end of the egg and keep tapping at the same spot. Once he had made a hole he would change the way he breathed and that in turn would give him more energy to get out, however hatching was without doubt an exhausting process.

The drive to hatch was strong and he persevered; eventually he made first a bump in the shell and then a hole. Time passed as he stopped for a much longer rest to gain strength for the final push. His mother sat patiently, as she had been through all this before. Her instinct told her that it could be at least many hours before the first young owl hatched out. He shifted round a little in the shell and tapped at the upper edge of the hole. Now, with the first hole made, the shell broke apart more easily. As he moved round, larger chunks fell from the egg.

His mother assisted where she could and lifted tiny fragments of shell away from the egg with her beak. Finally he was nearly all the way around and with one almighty heave he split the rest of the shell and, there he was, out. Not the most attractive of sights like so many young things, somewhat misshapen, wet and sticky, with his down plastered damply to his body, he lay in the nest which was a soft shallow hollow cup on a ledge full of sand and down, with a warm, secure, enormous and satisfied mother keeping him snug and safe. The effort of hatching had tired him greatly, so like many new borns, the very first thing he did in this new world was go to sleep.

Eventually, hunger awoke him; by this time he had dried out and lost the misshapen look of a newly hatched chick. His first down, a little skimpy, was sticking out at all angles and he still was not awfully pretty to look at. He started to call for food. His mother was well prepared; her mate had food stashed away ready for her and at a short call from her, over he came with food in his beak. The female, her name was Shushu, and she had originally come from Germany, stood up gently over the chick and pulled tiny pieces of meat off a dead rat that had been delivered by her mate, (whose name was Robert), and calling gently she tried to feed the young bird sitting between her huge feet. However it was not that easy, the baby owl’s head would not do as he wanted and kept wobbling about.

He was very unstable, then he would fall over.

Eventually, with a lot of perseverance from his mother, the youngster managed to get just three tiny pieces - and that was enough. At merely 24 hours old, it did not take much to fill him up as his stomach was tiny at this stage and still full of the remains of the yolk sac from his birth. He snuggled down in the nest scrape. Next to him were two more eggs nice and warm and on top of him was his Mother, keeping him sheltered in the chilly spring weather.

Occasionally, when Shushu needed to feed she would carefully get off the nest and Robert would with equal care get on, he would fold each of his feet into a ball so his talons were tucked away and could not hurt the eggs or the young owl. His mate would not let him stay on for long though, once she had fed and preened a little she wanted to get back on the eggs and young, and made that fact very clear to her mate. A day later the next egg started to hatch and the tiny insistent tapping noise started again as the second owl chick got ready to face the world. Once the new youngster was hatched and dried safely things got a little more active in the nest with two tiny bodies moving around and needing to be fed. The first hatched was getting much stronger and feeding well, the second was a female, she was a little bigger to start with and soon got the hang of feeding and pushing in front of her brother.

The last egg took longer to hatch, and was a couple of days slower in starting to hatch behind the other two. The chick, a male, was a little smaller at hatch than his brother had been, and not perhaps quite as strong, probably because the egg was a little smaller and because of the longer time in hatching. But he was a survivor and even though tapping his way out took him longer, and he needed a little more help from his mother, he made it. Shushu removed the discarded and no longer needed shell, and the last chick snuggled up to his big brother and sister.  And they were big. By the time he had hatched he was nearly three days behind them and the difference in size was dramatic. Had they been born in the wild and food been scarce, he most likely would not have survived. Many young owls die in the first few weeks of life, almost always the smallest do not survive if the going is tough, the food going to the biggest and strongest as nature intended.

But this chick was not in the wild, he was born in a bird of prey centre, in fact the oldest bird of prey centre in the world bar one. It was a specialist zoological collection where almost all the creatures were birds of prey and owls. Food was very plentiful, the aviary his parents lived in was large, safe and secure.

All around him were owls from all parts of the world. The Spectacled Owls from the jungles in South America had dark eye patches surrounded with a thin white strip like glasses perched on the end of their noses. Boobook Owls from Australia had round brown heads and bright yellow eyes and sounded like Cuckoos at night when they started calling.

There were owls from Africa, owls from North America and Owls from Europe and Asia. Tiny owls, not much bigger than your thumb, medium sized owls looking surprised and sleepy in the daylight, and perfectly enormous owls standing two and half feet tall, these latter species that were the parents of the new owl chicks, and they were the largest of all the owls.

During the daylight hours a little farther away the young owls could hear other birds calling - the musical call of the African Fish Eagles, known as the voice of Africa, the growling and barking of the Tawny Eagles, the kekking from the falcons and the mewing cries from the different species of Buzzards. There were other noises from vultures, kites and Secretary Birds.

Added to that there was the bleating from the Shetland Sheep and their lambs and occasionally, barking from the black Labradors that lived at the Centre. And all that was nothing in comparison to the songs of the night, called by over thirty species of owls of every shape and description.

The Eagle Owl chicks did what most young things did in the early stages of their lives - eat and sleep and grow. They really did grow at a phenomenal rate. Within three weeks they were able to stand, their secondary down had grown and they could thermo regulate, and so do without their parents keeping them warm at least during the day time. They could walk albeit unsteadily, about the nest ledge, although stomp might be a better word.

As they got older and stronger they got more adventurous and at three weeks old they had gone from tiny young the size of matchbox to three balls of down each about the size of a small football with powerful beaks and feet.

However life was about to change for one of them rather dramatically. The young owls heard the door to the enclosure opening, and something, actually someone, came in. A ladder was put up against the ledge and then a hand in a strong leather glove appeared over the edge of the nest ledge.

The female Eagle Owl Shushu puffed all her body feathers upright, making herself into an enormous size, she lifted her wings and turned them so the backs of the wing faced forward and outspread and she dropped her head low, she looked at least twice her normal stature, she clopped her beak, snapping the lower and upper mandible together violently and loudly in a very threatening manner. She moved away from the chicks, towards the hand and threw herself forward aggressively, feet outstretched, talons foremost, straight at the intruder, trying to drive it away from the nest. The human took no notice and gently pushed the mother owl away and off the nest ledge with her gloved hand, then she picked up the smallest of the young owls with her bare hand and moved swiftly down the ladder and backed out of the pen, a helper taking the ladder and carrying it out, as she left. The female flew back up to the nest to reassure herself and the chicks.

As owls are not able to count it is likely she did not notice there was one less chick. She settled back down by the young, her feathers slowing relaxing down into place, and peace returned to the Owl Courtyard.

In the meantime, the smallest baby owl, who had been taken out of the nest was not peaceful, he was furious and very scared. He lay on his back with his feet in the air grabbing at any movement with his talons which were not insubstantial at this point, and snapping and clopping with his beak, threatening any and everything that came near. He was so defensive he resembled a large furry ball of downy fury with a pair of wide yellow eyes peering out of the middle.

Jemima - for it was she who had braved his mother to get him, smiled at the little creature; she had seen this behaviour before in many young owls. The Centre often had young wild owls brought in, and these baby owls used to behave just like the little Eagle Owl. Young Little Owls were the most aggressive for their diminutive size, she had once put her hand in box that had been brought in with orphaned baby owls, and when she pulled it out again, there were five tiny, very cross baby Little Owls, one attached to each finger with ten tiny talons sunk into her skin. However this youngster was not an orphan, she had taken this baby from his mother because the Centre wanted to see if they could train an Eagle Owl to fly for the visitors at the Centre.

To do this she reckoned that hand rearing him would make a difference, so he was tame and would not be frightened by people, prams, wheelchairs, umbrellas and other things that he might meet in their day to day work. Owls she had learned, need to be treated quite differently from falcons and hawks and eagles when they are trained. They did not react well to the training methods used in the diurnal birds of prey.

She placed him gently into an open topped cardboard box, which had torn strips of newspaper as a bed for him. Then she carried him into the house. She was at home, helping out at the Centre over the Easter holidays during a break from college, this she did every break and holiday.

The young owl sat in his box hissing quietly to himself and sulking in a corner. You couldn’t blame him - he was scared, and away from all that he had known. But Jemima was not worried, she knew that in a couple of days he would stop being upset, and start to become tame.

He would soon forget about his real parents and his siblings, and start to think of her as parent and the provider of food. It has to be said that his main interest in life right now was liable to be food and not a lot else. That evening Jemima took the box containing the young owl into the sitting room of her parents' house, at the Centre, and taking the owl out, placed him on the floor. He immediately backed into the base of an arm chair and snapped his beak at her.

‘Well’, she said – ‘you had better have a name’. Jemima was a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London studying singing and piano. So she decided to call the young bird Mozart as that was the composer of the opera they were working on at college. 

Mozart really did not enjoy himself that evening. Jemima offered him tidbits of food, talking to him, tickling his feet gently and sitting with him all evening. By the end of that evening he would just about tolerate her, but he refused to eat and still hissed and clopped his beak at her if she moved quickly. She put him back in his box and placed it on the floor in her bedroom and they both eventually went to sleep, both tired by the day. The next day Mozart was getting a little hungry but still refused to take food from her hand. He came into the sitting room again in the evening and tried to get under the chair this time. He looked somewhat silly with his newly growing tail feathers sticking up in the air. The following day he decided that food was more important than sulking and trying to ignore Jemima, so he took food from her hand. By the end of the evening he was snuggling up beside her as she sat on the floor.

From then on he grew tamer and tamer - he also grew and grew! Wherever Jemima went, Mozart and his cardboard box went too.

If she was outside training other birds or talking to the customers, Mozart was there in his box. If she was looking after the incubators with second clutches of falcon, hawk and eagle eggs - Mozart was there. He was taken in to her bedroom when she went to bed and to breakfast in the kitchen in the mornings.

The only time he was not allowed out in his box was when she was actually flying eagles and hawks free for the customers and that was only because some of them might have seen him as potential prey. By the end of the Easter holidays he was very tame and called to Jemima in his baby voice whenever he heard her, the hearing of owls is superb and by this time he could tell her approach by her footsteps alone, he was able to do this for the rest of his life. As Jemima had to go back to college - Mozart went too. They drove up together in her beloved Morris Minor 1000 to her house in Ealing and there Mozart got to meet the Siamese and the Burmese cats that had been looked after by a couple of Jemima’s friends during the holidays. He soon had them worked out, if they upset him he just hissed at them, louder than they hissed at him and they turned tail and ran. He was now just learning to walk about properly and life became one huge adventure after another.