On a live screen playing in my art studio, I can see Bonnie the tawny owl feeding two fluffy, wide-eyed chicks.

She has tucked each owlet under a wing and is patiently popping food into their gaping beaks. These chicks are very precious to Bonnie, since her first clutch of eggs fell through the bottom of her nest.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to watch Bonnie and her mate Ozzy bring up owlets this year after they decided to nest in a tree off camera.

But, when I spotted her inspecting one of my nest boxes rigged with cameras in April, I noticed she looked like she was going to lay there.

This was a surprise since I had assumed she already had a clutch of eggs somewhere else and she should have been on her nest incubating.

It is very unusual for tawny owls to lay a second clutch in a season, but it can occasionally happen when their clutch is lost during the early stages of incubation.

I decided to investigate. It didn’t take me long to find the remains of her original nest. There were tooth marks where the bottom should have been, which suggested that squirrels living below had crawled up through the middle of the tree trunk and gnawed through the base of the nest.

Small fragments of eggshell in the centre of the tree trunk confirmed my worst fears.

But the good news is she looked like she may be about to lay again – this time inside a tree where my cameras could follow the action.

Sure enough, by late April Bonnie laid two shiny white eggs. I watched via the hidden cameras, transfixed as the eggs appeared one by one. They were roughly three days apart.

The hollow nest is a relatively unusual construct because there is a one metre drop from the entrance into it.

I designed it this way to make sure the tawny chicks didn’t fall out once they neared maturity. Tawny owl chicks are notorious for trying to fledge before they are ready, and I have seen too many accidents happen like this.

I’m glad I did because since the chicks hatched, we had some ferocious rainstorms and the deep drop helped keep these young owlets dry.

However, it hasn’t been easy for the parent birds to land elegantly from the entrance and in the early days I would wince as I watched Bonnie crash land awkwardly close to the clutch of eggs.

Thankfully she’s much better at navigating the drop now that the chicks have hatched.

I have a microphone in the nest alongside my camera and it’s been amazing to hear the beautiful sounds these owls make as they call back and forth to one another.

Recently the noise as chick’s clamour to be fed has been louder than usual and I have been worried at the urgency of the tone.

I think they could be hungry, because Ozzy doesn’t seem to have been bringing in as much food as he ought to at this stage.

Usually, the stronger the bond between a pair, the better the male is at providing for the young when they hatch.

Bonnie and Ozzy seemed tight to begin with and I often noticed them preening one another lovingly in the weeks before their eggs were laid.

Then, when Bonnie began incubating the first egg, Ozzy seemed to be very attentive, responding quickly to her calls for food.

But recently the bond seems to have become a little shaky and I’ve noticed Bonnie taking matters into her own talons, so to speak.

Recently, my cameras caught her swoop down to catch a rat and as the weeks have gone by, I’ve noticed her leave the nest to hunt more and more. Usually, it is the male that supplies most of the food at this stage whilst the female keeps her hatchlings warm. The chicks’ chances of survival reduce without a constant supply of food, so I’m hoping this is just a phase and that Ozzy will soon pull his socks up.

In the meantime, it’s a real pleasure to be able to look in on the chicks as they turn from tiny, wizened creatures into balls of fluff, and, in the weeks to come, the adventurous characters I expect them to become.

To see how the tawny chicks develop you can see Robert’s Ash Wood Livestream on his YouTube Channel, Robert E Fuller.