A chance walk in woods at Crockerton, near Warminster, meant that bird lovers Liz and Ron Horam were able to save two baby tawny owls that were dangerously close to floating down a stream.

Mr and Mrs Horam had been walking along a path in some bluebell woods near Crockerton with their granddaughters Sade, nine and Topaz, eight, who live in the village, when they saw the birds at the edge of the stream.

Mrs Horam, from Kingsdon, Somerset, said: “We had been trying to get closer to the stream because we had seen a Canadian goose and wanted to see if it had a nest,. That is when we saw the balls of fluff.

“My husband thought they were hedgehogs but as we got closer we realised they were tiny owls.

“They had obviously fallen out of a hole in the tree and one had landed near the edge of the stream and the other was in it.

“They were looking quite ill and their eyes were closed.

“We picked them up otherwise they would never have survived.”

They took the birds to their son’s home on Clay Street in Crockerton, where they got a heat lamp to keep them warm and fed them strips of beef with tweezers.

After contacting the RSPB and RSPCA, the birds were collected by the charity’s wildlife hospital at West Hatch, near Taunton and are now recovering alongside two other baby owls found elsewhere.