In the south-west, this owl is a winter nomad, forced to travel vast distances to seek its favourite prey, the vole. Ringed birds from Britain have been found as far away as Russia, the Mediterranean and North Africa. Once an owl has arrived in Britain and it has fed and is in good shape it will turn and glide out west and north, over moor, mountain and sea to reach safe spring and summer breeding grounds, often on far-flung islands in the west, like Skomer Island, Skokholm, and the Outer Hebrides. I had heard that some migrated to Devon in very small numbers. This was to be my biggest owl challenge yet. I knew it was a rarity here, but a regular rarity. Perhaps there could be one, two, six or even sixteen. I hoped my search would be worth it.
I was convinced that if I looked hard enough, waited long enough, searched widely enough, winter would eventually yield at least one near where I lived. With a close eye on my birding friends on Twitter, I waited for news, and made periodic trips up onto the moors. Spring was just around the corner; any Shorties that were here would soon be making their way north to their breeding grounds. I consulted friends in the BTO who had volunteers studying them with the use of surveys in Scotland. It appeared that this species is one of the most difficult to count, and much of the survey work is carried out by enthusiastic and very dedicated members of the public. Was it so difficult, I wondered, partly because of its ground-nesting habit, where nests could not always be found, and chicks could not be counted so easily as they were not confined to an artificial nest-box site? The nomadic demeanour, extremely camouflaged plumage, and the crepuscular dawn and dusk habits, would surely not help. Coupled with this, all the reports admitted that individuals that do not nest successfully can easily go unnoticed and this could skew what we know about numbers in the UK. Consequently, one estimate ranged between 780 and 2,700 breeding pairs, a confusingly broad range! More conservative estimates put the owl’s numbers at the lower end, but in reality we just cannot be sure and more survey work is required. So these numbers are amongst the most unreliable for any raptor or owl. Coupled with concerns about declines in the last two decades, I was beginning to feel despondent about ever seeing one on Dartmoor.
One way to locate owls is by their calls, and the Shorty’s is quite soft; since it is diurnal and can rely on finding other owls of its kind by sight, unlike the noisy and sometimes complex calls of woodland owls, it can afford to have a simpler repertoire and softer call. The male’s territorial call is a low ‘boo-boo-boo-boo’ that owl expert Heimo Mikkola describes as resembling ‘the distant, slow puffing of an old steam train’. The female may respond, Mikkola says, with ‘a low, ugly, harsh “ree-yow” or “keee-yow” call. Other calls are a soft grunted “whu” followed by hissing like a leaky tap.’ In spring male Short-eared Owls begin their dramatic displays in which they may wing-clap in flight, but I knew that since they are not thought to breed on Dartmoor I would not see that this far south.
By the beginning of March, when much of the country was still battening down the hatches instead of enjoying the start of spring, I had almost given up searching. In South Devon, a wintery backlash was building, and this was bad news for breeding birds of any sort. Snow and ice were forecast and bitter cold and gales threatened to keep us all in an unusual bubble of Arctic conditions. However, I remained hopeful, as this could mean good news for me: cold weather coming in from Scandinavia can often herald an influx of Short-eared Owls as they arrive to avoid the worst weather, seeking refuge in the milder climate.
Further north, a migrating Short-eared Owl was found injured, hit by a car near Lincoln, and was taken to be rehabilitated in a rescue centre. Its outrage at being held captive was evident on its face when it appeared on TV, and I considered getting on the train to go and see it close-to. Then I heard that two owls had been found dead on the moors in County Durham. This pair had been discovered by a member of the public out for a walk. Bizarrely, the two corpses had been pushed into a pothole near Selset Reservoir not far from Middleton-in-Teesdale. A quick search informed me that the reservoir is part of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the North Pennines, and is perfect Shortie territory: surrounded with open heather moors, as well as the peatlands, hay meadows, dales, woods and upland rivers of the moorland, this area of the Pennines appears to be just the right kind of breeding habitat for Short-eared Owls, with an abundance of rough grassland and their main prey: voles.
The moorland reservoir is in an area specially known and loved for its tranquillity, wildlife and night-time dark skies. Why then would a person wish to destroy and hide not one but two of these iconic moorland owls? Had they been destroyed to protect game birds? A post-mortem confirmed that they had been shot. The shooting occurred at breeding time, so the owls were possibly a pair, possibly nesting, or about to breed. Other birds in the area include both red and black grouse, and the presence of strips of burned moorland – a method used to improve the conditions for raising grouse as it provokes fresh new shoots upon which the game birds can feed – revealed that a grouse moor was nearby. Could it have been that these owls, seen from a distance, were taken for the gamekeeper’s bête noire, the hen harrier? Had they been deliberately and mistakenly culled to protect game for shooting? Unfortunately for the owl, female hen harriers’ plumage closely resembles that of the owls, with a circular face, tail barring and similar size. Without proper identification, the low, moor-washed jizz of a Short-eared Owl on the wing, often hunting in broad daylight as it does, and tending to hover momentarily over its prey, could be mistaken for the flight of a hen harrier. Even though all these birds are fully protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and the criminal activity of killing one could result in six months’ imprisonment or unlimited fines, this is not always enough to deter somebody from setting their crosshairs on these rare birds. An untrained eye could easily have confused them and on impulse pulled the trigger.
The police appealed for information about the crime at the time, and investigators at the RSPB in the area reminded people of the rarity and conservation importance of the Short-eared Owls, as well as the fact that their prey is mostly small mammals rather than other birds. However, in spite of education efforts and laws and press releases by those who wish to protect wildlife, no perpetrator was discovered and no action taken. Months later, the story was forgotten, and nearby, driven grouse shooting (big business in areas like this) continued. There is no single bird in the whole of Britain that is closer to being rendered extinct than the hen harrier, perhaps due to the human habit of big business shooting, and it is tragic that Short-eared Owls are sometimes caught up in the crossfire.
On further investigation I found a study from the University of Leeds that looked into the shared, threatened habitat of the hen harrier and the Short-eared Owl. ‘The Ember Project’ found that the impact of heather burning on moorland estates can alter the hydrology of peatland so that it can dry out and release heavy metals into nearby rivers and CO2 into the atmosphere. These peaty uplands are not just the preserve of raptors, they are carbon sinks, effectively the Amazon of the UK.
The shooting estates respond that they are helping to preserve the rare Black grouse on their moorlands, and more tangled and complex ethical questions are raised. How can we prioritise which species and which habitats to preserve and which to cull? Who decides which is more important, and where do we draw the boundaries? Such fraught conversations rage on about the contested habits and beleaguered species of Britain, and meanwhile some of them may quietly vanish.
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One final cold afternoon I ventured high on to Rippon Tor, a prominent outcrop on the southern moor. This windy spot gives a wide view from Dartmoor, sweeping down over my part of Devon and stretching all the way to the mouth of the glittery Teignmouth estuary. Near the hilltop I sat in the lee of the granite tor and listened to the swish of the grass amongst the boulders and looked out across the fields as they fell away toward the sea. The sky was lit with an uncanny low grey layer of cloud with lemon light seeping in rays beneath,
washing the land with a watery paleness. I sat for a long while in a breeze sharpened with flecks of ice. In the air was the edge of a scent of snow.
A flicker caught my eye. Finally, after all this time, out of the gold of the grass came a pair of long wings, laden with all the browns and ochres of the moor, the darkness of bramble and old deadwood and winter bracken, the sepia and gold of the grasses. As it shimmered past I turned to see it hover a little, its wings in a V-shape, the pale circle of its face pointing downward. Aiming into the flax-blond grasses and the tangle of lichens and wizened furze it dropped vertically and vanished. I felt that was it, but when it came up again I was sure: this time I didn’t need the binoculars. Asio flammeus, the flame-eyed owl. It couldn’t have been more than twenty yards away. The owl lifted without moving its wings as some invisible draught blew it closer to me. Oblivious to my presence it hovered again and turned, revealing pale underwings with clear black wingtips and halfway down, a dark tattoo of a crescent moon: the carpal patch, close enough almost to touch. A Short-eared Owl!
My stomach knotted itself into a bundle. It lifted a little higher, drifted downhill slightly and dropped by increments as it fixed its prey, long legs dangling and at the ready. A slant of light brightened the soft clotted cream of the leading edges of its wings, the beaten gold of the primaries, and the white trailing tips as the bird circled around, buoyant, and quartered back, still searching, now veering uphill toward me.
What happened next was so startling I could hardly believe it was real. In my cross-legged sitting position, surrounded by grass and rocks, I must have looked like a part of the landscape, for the owl came closer, fixing its haunting yellow eyes upon me until it was so close I could pick out the individual black masking around its eyes. And still it came. And then, it stretched out its legs, as if to land on me. All at once I could see the beige covering over its legs and feet, so soft I might not have minded, but for the deathly-sharp black claws that now splayed and reached right out towards my head. It was then that I flinched, letting out a yelp. The cry was a warning, partly from my own surprise and panic at this owl’s mistake, but mainly to put it off course. To my amazement, the owl yelped back just as I ducked to avoid being scalped by those outstretched talons. In its error it had taken me in my brown camouflage gear and post-like stance for nothing more than a tussocky perch. It quickly swerved off, still yelping, its voice high with offence and alarm.
Veering with a light and less than dignified wobble in its flight, but still staying low to the ground, its feathery hues blended eerily into the glow of the hillside. Off it went, and I never saw it again. I don’t know which of us was more shocked. I sat dry-mouthed, heart thumping, owl-dazzled from the follicles on my scalp to the tips of my toenails.
*
If a Short-eared Owl were to take flight from the boggy tundra in the centre of north Dartmoor, from the grassy whispering place where many rivers rise amongst the sphagnum and sundews, the only sounds it would hear would be the voices of curlew and plover, the rustle and whisper of the moor grasses.
The owl would muscle over the updraughts rising off the exposed granite ridge of High Willhays, the highest point of the moor: 621 metres above sea level. The thermals here would lift the owl and sweep it over the fields of north Devon, and over the Severn estuary, skirting the conurbations and cities, perhaps stooping to feed on voles in the edgelands, and then on over the moorlands and the Black Mountains that rise to the Brecon Beacons. The owl would find good hunting over the Welsh marches, and if it veered in a more westerly direction it would hear winds filled with the turbulent voices of seabirds over the coastal cliffs. Reaching the outlying islands that skirt the Welsh coast, it might be tempted in spring by a rich supply of young and fledgling seabirds.
Heading back inland it might skirt west around Wrexham or veer north, to skim the marshes that lie before the Mawddach estuary and the grassy Llŷn peninsula, matching its journey with the arrival of the ospreys as they travel back to their nesting grounds here. It would find good feeding in the vast areas of moor-covered upland, dry heath and blanket bogs around the Berwyn mountain range; or heading east it would find good habitat in the Peak District, and still further east, the wide expanses of the windy Lincolnshire wolds, then the long northering spine of the Pennines.
But some of the best places to see Shorties, I had heard, were further north still. These northern haunts may harbour the owls that have come down across the North Sea from northern Scandinavia, and are some of the best breeding grounds, rich with wild land stretching across the Highlands. To reach these the owls must confront challenging sea passages, but they are fearless flyers, and easily capable of crossing the North Sea as they voyage to the British Isles. They can be found anywhere in coastal areas from eastern Scotland and Northumberland all the way to the Outer Hebrides. My friend Esther reported them on the dunes around Aberdeen, and it was on the Northumbrian dunes that I had my first encounter with an arriving owl. In the Northern Isles my friend and author of the photographic blog ‘Owls About That Then’, Paul Riddle, photographed some of his best shots of Shorties in some of their most spectacular breeding places in the Outer Hebrides.
I think, in my not very extensive experience, that the best attributes of all birdwatchers are patience and tenacity. On his trip to North Uist, Paul told me, ‘a lot of time’ was spent waiting and watching (and this could mean days rather than hours, or the mere minutes that most of us flibbertigibbets are prepared to put in). The positioning of oneself is vital: if I have learned one thing from successful nature watchers, it is about putting ourselves in the animal’s path. This means not just setting down anywhere, but selecting a well-researched, likely spot, one where a sense of the bird’s needs comes into play. The skill is in thinking like an owl, knowing where it will perch and rest. And when an owl is not feeding it will be resting.
Paul told me how he put himself in these places; viewpoints where he could park his car by the road, set up his long lens before a wide swathe of woolly moorland and wait within view of a few fence posts and some distant conifer plantations. The winds would whisper, blowing mist in and away; mizzle would come and go; the car clock would turn; and Paul would wait, and watch for the owls as they might or might not sweep in to feed. Given that they only hunt and feed for a tiny proportion of the day, Paul must indeed have had a long wait.
North Uist hosts a vast plethora of feeding for Short-eared Owls but you have to be hardy about the weather and also about the extensive, sullen bogscapes. It lies between Harris and Benbecula, just a short sail south of the better-known Isle of Lewis. Like the other Hebridean isles it is a maze of low-lying and quite fragile wetland habitats, a ‘drowned landscape’ of peat bogs and lochans, as well as a string of rare dunes of dazzling white sand and long flat beaches at its edges. How I longed to go there, hearing Paul’s descriptions. How many of us store up these longings, sometimes for years, a packed-away desire to go somewhere, see something, stored in a cupboard in the mind? And then one day the door bursts open and we just have to get there. My time will come, and I am counting on that, perhaps next year.
Strong winds and westerly showers had blown in from the Atlantic for the entire three days of Paul’s trip with his friend Adey, and the pair were nearly thoroughly disheartened when, on their final day, the sky cleared and before catching the three o’clock ferry they were able to drive slowly down a bare, unfenced lane called Committee Road. Watching and scanning, Paul parked in a likely spot. Although there are miles of crystal seas and white shell-sand beaches to look at, he headed here, to where much of the land is flat, boggy and on first glance empty-looking. But for an owl, a naturalist or a lover of the northern isles who adores the subtle intricacy and low-level beauty of these rich places, the opposite is true: ‘There was activity everywhere!’ Paul exclaimed. ‘It was utterly amazing what a difference a mild upturn in the weather made.’ It is not easy wielding a 500-millimetre lens out of a car window trying to obtain flight shots, but Paul go
t some close-ups as the owl, making the most of the fair weather and concentrating on hunting, ignored the car and the lens and got on with the important business. When it had fed, it returned close by and perched on a fence post, and the resulting images were stunning. Having seen them, I planned to take Jenny there after her exams were over. Jenny had other ideas; she insisted on staying a little further south. Her plan was to spend a week exploring the Isle of Mull together, and going to stay on Iona, an island, we’d decided, everybody should go to at least once in their life.
That day on North Uist Paul saw not one but seven Short-eared Owls, proving what a fabulously rich habitat the isles can be for the species. The resulting pictures, now on his website, are entrancing. I think also that he has a very patient family who kindly release him to go on his birding forays. It pays off: the images capture all the colours of light on the peat bog in the plumage of the birds. We can see the brightness of the primaries in flight, and in one, the owl is perched, looking directly into the camera lens, its tiny facial feather tufts raised, along with the black eye-mask giving its stark, flaming eyes a look possessed by pure wildness.
Owl Sense Page 18