The Owl by Stephen Moss

Author:Stephen Moss [Moss, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529908275
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2023-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

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Long-eared and Short-eared Owls

This one is more loquacious on the hillside

at night than the nightingale from the slope.

During the day it doesn’t shift its head

from a big hollow tree, wise behaviour.

Dafydd ap Gwilym, ‘The Owl’ (c. 1350)

It was a warm, sunny August afternoon; too warm for most birds, although a handful of swallows were hawking for insects in the deep blue sky, above the River Huntspill on the Somerset coast. I wasn’t even here to look for birds; at least, not primarily. Instead, I had my eyes down, searching carefully through the long, dry grass for late summer butterflies: skippers, coppers, blues and browns. And then, without warning, a bird appeared out of the hawthorn hedge nearby. It was clearly an owl, but which one? It was obviously too dark for a barn owl, so my first thought was a tawny. And, on a quick view, the bird’s rounded wings and richly mottled, dark chestnut-brown plumage suggested that.

But as I watched it fly away, something did not feel quite right. For a start, the bird looked far too small and compact. On the very few occasions I have seen a tawny owl flying during the daytime, it has appeared huge, with a characteristically floppy flight. This bird, by contrast, looked much smaller and slimmer. Then I noticed rusty-orange spots on the upperwings.

As the seconds ticked past, as if in slow motion, my brain began to click into action. Meanwhile, the swallows, which before the owl appeared had been twittering softly to one another, went berserk, increasing the volume and intensity of their alarm calls, while flying as close as they dared to the invader in their midst. As the harassed bird fled across the river and plunged into the willows on the other side, never to be seen again, I finally worked out its identity. It was, of course, a long-eared owl – the first I had ever seen in Somerset.

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