The diary entry is a bit older and the Eurasian Eagle Owls Tristan and Isolde are back and busy. Like last year, there's already an Egyptian Goose that also chose the Castle Ruins as her nesting site. Both parties aren't happy about their neighbour.
From EGE OWLS Diary, Feb 11, 2026
Dear eagle owl enthusiasts,
The eagle owl breeding season is now just around the corner. After prolonged periods of frost, there are now regular frost-free nights, and on a few days the sun's rays have even managed to warm up the south-facing eagle owl nesting sites a little.
The breeding site in the castle ruins is located in a milder region, and courtship activities are in full swing. Egg laying could take place within the next ten days. However, there is now great unrest in the ‘castle ruins arena’ almost every evening.
The Egyptian geese
In 2018, I was still rarely able to observe Egyptian geese in the approximately 200 potential eagle owl habitats I monitored in the Eifel region. In the meantime, the population of this invasive species has grown dramatically. Egyptian geese are now ubiquitous in the rock faces of river valleys, on bridge piers and in quarries, gravel pits and clay pits with small bodies of water. Since 2020, I have repeatedly observed eagle owls abandoning their broods due to Egyptian geese. Of the approximately 120 to 180 broods started each year, up to six breeding failures have been proven to be caused by Egyptian geese (+ unreported cases). Some of the breeding niches used by eagle owls for many years are very prominent in the rock faces. Egyptian geese flying past can hardly help but be interested in these ‘luxury apartments’. Even if a female eagle owl is already brooding there, some geese fly to these niches and drive the eagle owls away from their nests. In some cases, the geese later breed there successfully, in other cases they are young, inexperienced geese that are only exploring possible breeding sites without any serious intention of breeding.
In breeding areas with many similarly suitable nesting niches, the two species competing for nesting sites can develop parallel breeding traditions. On other steep walls, eagle owls regularly abandon their broods. How exactly the conflicts between the species play out has hardly been observed before – and never in such detail as in ‘our’ castle ruins. There have been no documented cases of eagle owls successfully driving away Egyptian geese. In this respect, our webcam is doing pioneering work.
There is no doubt that the Egyptian goose population is impacting the eagle owl population. However, I have not yet been able to identify any significant impact on the reproduction rate of large owls. Many other additional factors weigh more heavily as causes of unsuccessful breeding, and the eagle owl population is stable.
Breeding Egyptian geese and their eggs are protected by animal welfare legislation. Any kind of ‘intervention’ during the breeding season is prohibited.
Our observations of events lead us to take sides with one species or the other. An ‘I'm for the geese’ or ‘I'm against the geese’ may trigger heated discussions in our minds and on YouTube in the live stream chat or comments. However, this has no effect on the animals involved or on the processes taking place in the ruins.
The only way to ‘remove’ adult Egyptian geese in North Rhine-Westphalia is for the hunting ground owner to shoot them between 16 October and 31 January. Juvenile Egyptian geese may be shot all year round.
In my opinion, it is questionable to what extent shooting until 31 January in habitats such as our castle ruins would make a difference for the eagle owls. As we have seen, there are other geese that are ready to take over the breeding site. If these are young birds from the previous year that are inexperienced in breeding, they could possibly cause even more disturbance in the ruins. They would be less focused in choosing a niche and more hesitant or even unwilling to breed. As a result, the activities of the geese could cause more disturbance than we are currently experiencing. (...)
There are two cameras allowing you to watch the owls (and the Egyptian Goose).
They have 2 cameras providing livestreams from the ruins:
That was one of the main things that helped someone get through to me one time was someone was saying it was spring break from college, which since I'm long out of school and don't have children, is something that I don't think about. Same with Lent. Taking a 40 day break from social media would be a nice idea for many, even without the religious aspect!
I've occasionally looked at the French community weekly thread when pseudo mentions something about superbowl and it seemed similar, just about 4 or 5 people just saying one sentence. I guess a lot of you are used to communicating online only in English? The more I try to be inclusive with posts here, featuring things from other places or even just making sure things include metric units, it makes me think what it would be like for most of the web to be non-English for me. I've been trying out DeepL at someone's recommendation here to translate things better and I found a new online multilanguage dictionary that seems great at listing owl names in other languages to help me find new international content that been yielding good results, but it's a good reminder how much gets hidden behind not being able to just read or speak things.
My family is Pennsylvania Dutch, and my grandparents could speak their language and I got to see them do business with the Amish people here, and it felt so alien to see them speaking a whole other language when we can't. We do have the difficulty making smalltalk other than grumbling, so we did inherit that!
I have been surprised over the years to see more of the commentors here are women than I expected. Probably not an equal portion of overall subscribers, but as far as people that actually leave comments, it might be fairly close. I'm always curious what our overall demographics are.
Oh, that looks so cute! We do get bats in, but I don't normally get to see them. I'm not sure what we do to care for them, so I'm curious if there will be anything for me to do involving them this year. Usually I only see them at events, and I can barely tell they are there through the crowd of children and the person holding it. I have been on a lot of cave tours and have seen them there in the wild, which is fun.
Our bat populations were getting hit very hard with White Nose Syndrome, a fungal infection, that killed millions of bats, but I think the situation is gradually improving last I heard. A relative used to be a park ranger at one of our national parks and would give bat lectures for all the crowds of tourists. We got to know bats are harmless early on.
The driving thing was scary, but at least that felt like a somewhat normal thing, basically just being too tired. What had me scared was for about the last year I've felt a real mental and physical decline, and especially the mental fog had me worried I was getting dementia or something like that. I had also been feeling depressed because I haven't had enough attention or energy to engage in my hobbies, so I felt like a bad student at my music class and I felt like a failure at the rescue because I haven't been able to commit or participate as much as I've wanted during the off season. So I'm really relieved I'm not dying or losing my mind and am just severely sleep deprived. I hear it can take a few weeks-months to bounce back, so I can't wait to start sleep therapy even if it is a bit of a hassle at first. Everyone else I know that has the CPAP says it is amazing once you get used to all the gear.
I have enjoyed talking with you and anyone else that may be interested in my life. We do have a rather active Dull Mens Club, so there may actually be others that find all this interesting!
I'm glad you and everyone else finds some happiness here every day. It is a lot of fun for me as well.