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:
My home instance is feddit.org and it depends on the community. Some posts in bigger communities draw a lot of attention, others have barely an upvote. Admins/Mods are volunteers with limited time and had to place some boundaries. One main rule is that only English and German should be used. Most people are from German speaking countries and it's expected that they at least are able to read and understand English. While some of our communities favour English most posts and comments are indeed in German.
Do you mind sharing? While I have a mild interest in languages, I have a (language teacher) friend who is very much into birding and plants. Including learning the Latin names. She would be thrilled to find such a tool.
In Germany it's kind of similar with strong local dialects. Frisian and "Plattdüütsch" seem to have fallen out of favour with time. A lot of younger people simply haven't learned to speak them.
We will get along just great! 😁
A lot of women simply don't disclose being female. Women experience a great deal of harrassment on the internet when they are recognizable as women. Compared to men they are attacked with a higher frequency and a level of hatred that most men never experience.
It's a good sign that women feel save enough to be so open.
No time for better pictures. It's been grumpy enough.
Glosbe.com is the dictionary. When I typed in German, it even has a few dialects. Searching owl in English > German gives me eule and uhu, but then a little further down it lists about 80 related words, which are different owls around the world, even down to the super oddballs like the Cinnamon Island Scops (Gelbschnabeleule).
I just tried it with some German bird words (vogel, meise, spatz, kohlmeise) and it's giving me more English slang/idioms than other bird species, but perhaps I'm not searching the most useful terms. Using Rotkehlchen though, it does give me suggestions to also check out Japanese Robin and Siberian Rubythroat, so success may vary.
It's funny coming from a family that once spoke a different German dialect that I've never thought much about Germany still having different dialects. We learned so little European history, most of what I have learned is just from Youtube. We never discussed the unification or any of that. I don't even know if we really ever discussed much about the Berlin Wall or why it was there. I remember seeing it on a newspaper and adults seeming interested at the time, but never had much context until much later as an adult. Just pretty much Archduke Ferdinand was mentioned, not who he was or anything, just that he got shot, then a quick mention of the Treaty of Versailles, and then the typical stuff.
I definitely get women not being always so open about their gender online. I've listened to many explain the things they get subjected to. People can be so ridiculous to strangers. I like keeping this a peaceful place in the Fediverse, and I appreciate that people seem comfortable here. It's been a real embarrassment that ongoing politics around the world and especially the US have done a lot to make a lot of other communities here a decent bit less friendly. Every day makes me more grateful we can just chat about cool birds and their support staff here and crack some jokes,
Your bat friend is very ferocious and cute looking. Do you still have it or did you release it or take it somewhere?