Owl prowl

Searching for the birds of the night.

I swear I heard an owl the other night.

I was working late in the spare room. The soft, melancholy hu-hooo-hoo drifted in from somewhere outside, clear enough to make me stop. I listened with held breath, but the only sound I heard from then on was the neighbour’s TV. I must have imagined it.

When I finished working and returned to the living room, my partner looked at me.

“Did you hear an owl earlier?”

I kept one ear open all that night, but whatever called to me in the spare room had faded into the darkness.

A short-eared owl circling Walthamstow Wetlands. Image: @Elliott81758817 via Walthamstow Birders

I haven’t seen any owls in London by myself, but I’m sure they’re around. Local birders have sighted a short-eared owl on several occasions nearby, and even photographed it.

A pair of little owls moved into one of the islands on the reservoirs, teasing locals with their occasional calling and only revealing themselves visibly once or twice. Their arrival in January 2023 may be the first recorded on site this century.

Once or twice a barn owl will grace the wetlands with its passing presence, gliding silently above the water, a spectre on the wing.

Image: Bob Brewer on Unsplash

In June 2023, local birders in Hampstead Heath made national news after photographing the first recorded barn owl there since the end of World War II.

I’ve been lucky enough to see a barn owl on several occasions: twice on the Norfolk Broads, swooping low in the dusk light to snatch an unsuspecting mouse, once while driving on a dual carriageaway in Essex, hovering over a field, and once perched on standing deadwood on a friend’s Devon farm.

Every time has been an absolute treat. The barn owl is one of my all-time favourite animals: seeing the pale impression of a deadly ghost drifting in silence feels almost otherworldly.

I love this video that demonstrates the comparison between a barn owl and other birds in flight.

Traditionally farmland birds, barn owls - much like the UK’s other birds of prey - were severely affected by the widespread use of toxic DDT in the 1950s and 60s and populations plummeted.

They take their name from their penchant for nesting in old, disused barns and farm buildings, a method of adapting to the UK’s widespread loss of trees. Today their ethereal presence is threatened by changes in agricultural practices leading to declining numbers of prey, and the development of old buildings depriving them of suitable places to nest.

Installing nesting boxes is one way to ensure barn owls have somewhere to breed, and could be key to luring them back to cities. In rural areas, it will be up to the farmers to shift from current, unsustainable industrial practices and reintroduce natural habitats to give them a fighting chance of survival.

On a side note, have you seen the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 at the Natural History Museum? Seventeen-year-old Carmel Bechler from Israel was awarded Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 for this absolute stunner of a photo of two barn owls.

Image: Carmel Bechler, Wildlife Photographer of the Year

One weekend this January, when I was staying with my in-laws, I was awoken by the shrill calling of a tawny owl somewhere outside. It was so loud I was convinced it was perched right by the window.

Torch in hand, hoodie over pyjamas, I trudged across the garden with my partner looking for it. The beam of white torchlight danced over the silhouetted trees, glistening with fresh rainfall.

A woodpigeon woke and took off from its perch, a cacophony of flapping and breaking twigs.

We followed the sound of the calling tawny, only to suddenly hear it call again in another direction. We headed out across the village in the dead of night, watched only by a wary fox crouched in the hedgerow.

Was the owl’s cry echoing off the redbrick walls? Was it flying around us, taunting us from different perches in the village? Or were there simply several owls?

We chased the haunting screeches through the darkness before eventually conceding defeat, lured back to the house by the warmth of the bed.

I know there was a tawny owl out there somewhere, but I never did see it. The owl remains a mystery, a passing ghost, melting again into the night like a drop of ink in an infinite well.

Perhaps the way it will always be.