Owl Sense

by Miriam Darlington

  The story, received with glee in the media, rapidly lurched into slapstick. Things were even sillier on social media. In laughing at this bird, we betrayed our lack of respect. For me, a wild Eagle Owl flying over the city had something post-apocalyptic about it. The scale of human indifference, where other species are marginalised and mistreated, slid into perspective. In a man-made world, these predators are still possible; they can hunt and feed themselves effectively amongst the parks and the concrete, the rat-infested cliffscapes of a city dominated by humans. Perhaps the Eagle Owl could thrive alongside us if it weren’t for the power lines, the stray electricity, the prey that could so easily be poisoned or disappear beneath concrete, the drug dealers, the aggressive gulls, the airguns …

  At an encounter like that of the Exeter Eagle Owl, far from seeing it as comic our ancestors might have slipped quickly into a different sort of thinking than we do now, a thinking where far more serious things were at play: for them supernatural powers might have been at work. They would have paid more attention to these random events of nature than we do now, rendering them poignant with gravitas and meaning. Animals were messengers and mirrors to ancient humans. What would the appearance of a powerful bird like this represent? We may have respected its powers of sight and flight and skills of hunting, and may have been fearful of it too. It is likely that its appearance would have been closely observed, used to tell a story, to fill in something about life that we were unsure or uncertain about; to comfort, predict or to warn, whether it was to teach about the present or the future. Birds gave us signs, told us something with their behaviour and nothing about it was seen as random. When they took off something had happened, as if they were communicating something, as if we were joined in a network of understanding.

  Our own species evolved alongside these predators, and so our brains were honed to pay attention to them. Without this alertness, humans would have faltered. Migrant animals and birds would have come from the north to escape bad weather and famine, to avoid the harshest winter weather fronts that may have been following on behind them. Along with changes in the landscape, their arrival would have reminded us to store up our food and prepare ourselves. Owls may have carried these meanings for our ancestors, and as such they became vessels of belief, about storms and ill omen, which have faded but not altogether disappeared. They remain still in our folk memory, the hag, the ghoul or the demon, in the seasonal rites we once observed more widely, in literature and story that resist change.

  Even now it is attractive (if you’re not a sheep farmer) to imagine that there might still be beasts out there. Many people believe that in the wilds of Dartmoor and Bodmin moor, and in other parts of the British countryside, secret predators still prowl. It is as if we need the idea of the beast to satisfy something locked away, some forgotten, buried thought deep in our psyche; the human self that evolved to listen out for, and to fight off, wild beasts if need be. Long ago we eliminated the bears and wolves that threatened us and competed with us for prey, and where once we told tales of beasts around our campfires, now we, the powerful ones, can gaze at them in zoos, and recreate them in books and stories. As soon as we could, we wrote our beasts down in stories such as Homer’s Odyssey where creatures such as Scylla and Charybdis dwell, and in Beowulf as Grendel and his mother. Now we have contained our beasts in story, song and more recently in literature and horror film. But we still need something a little scary out there in the wild. And often it is the spooky owl that carries that legacy, of things that might come out of the dark to get us. Things that might devour us, possess us or carry off our children.

  Perhaps more than most owls that I have seen the Eagle Owl seems the most aloof from humans. It resists our interference, and adapts to our doings only if it has to. Several aspects of the Eagle Owl’s biology tend towards this. First, it is designed for stealth and camouflage: the brown-and-buff mottling of its plumage and its habit of staying immobile for long periods in its tree or cliff habitat keep it well out of sight and out of our reach so it can live alongside us and keep a low profile. And being crepuscular or nocturnal, it is very, very difficult to spot in low light, especially if you are not paying attention. Second, if seen it presents a sizeable target, and being a top predator, is a threat to humans. And yet the fact that it could be shot or eaten by us, makes us a distinct threat to it. It is therefore better for both species if we stay separate: and now that we have our own highly effective weaponry (cars, guns, poisons, electrical wires), contact or even conflict usually ends badly for the owl.

  *

  After an unsuccessful trip with Benji to try and spot the Exeter Eagle Owl, I was more determined than ever to see one of these magnificent birds in the wild. My next lead, Vincenzo Penteriani from Andalusia, southern Spain, confidently said he could take me to see his patch in the mountains where the Eagle Owl thrives. This was at the southern limits of the owl’s range in Europe. But by the time I was free to take up his tantalising offer he would have moved on to a summer of researching bears. ‘You’ll have to go and see my friends in Helsinki,’ Vincenzo told me. Helsinki? My mind did a small flip, swooping from the warm, dry southern edge of the Eagle Owl’s range close to the Rock of Gibraltar where it bordered with the Mediterranean, to the outer reaches of Scandinavia, and the cold northern limits of Bubo bubo’s snowy wilderness habitat.

  Vincenzo told me about the great guys based at his old research area in Finland, in Helsinki and further north: Jari Valkama who was now director of the bird monitoring team at the Helsinki Natural History Museum, and Jere Toivola, a brilliant young bird ringer who would, he promised, take me to see owls in the wild in Finland. This was the opposite to what I had originally visualised in sunny Spain, but it was beginning to sound good. This region of the Eagle Owl’s range encompasses the Finnish taiga forests stretching endlessly up towards Lapland and dwindling into the tundra of the Arctic Circle. More than that, the north harboured the most mysterious owls in Europe, the few remaining species that I had not yet seen: the Hawk Owl, the Great Grey, the Ural Owl and even possibly the Snowy. This new trip might put these within reach.

  Immediately, challenges presented themselves. I didn’t speak Finnish and, as my dad warned me knowledgably on the phone, ‘Finnish people are a bit funny.’ When had he ever been to Finland? Why do we make these sweeping generalisations about whole nations? But my father insisted. ‘No, it’s well known! There’s this saying about them: when a Finn stops looking at his own shoes and starts looking at yours, you know he likes you.’

  I wasn’t going to let something like shyness put me off, and consulted my cousin Maggie who lives in Helsinki and actually lives with a real live Finn. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘They are very quiet. And they think we talk too much,’ she told me on the phone. ‘Just remember – don’t worry about silences.’ I prepared myself mentally. I would allow for silences, and I would try to be a better listener. It would do me good. In an email Jere, the young bird ringer, assured me (in very good English) that he had been ringing (or helping to ring) Eagle Owls since he was tiny, observing the breeding cycle of this ferocious owl from a young age in the arms of his owl-obsessed dad. He would find me some, no problem.

  What I know now, and didn’t know when I bought my ticket, was that Jere was not a traditional looking-at-your-shoes Finn. He was a friendly and enthusiastic guerrilla owl finder; I would later watch him scale down a dizzying glacier-smoothed granite cliff, without harness or helmet, scrambling nimbly down to narrow nest ledges, elfin as Legolas in Lord of the Rings, and then expect me to follow after. He could retrieve a brace of struggling, hostile juvenile Eagle Owls and place rings on them. More than that, he could dangle them from one hand, whilst climbing back and being dived on by the furious parents. This was to be extreme owling. Coupled with Jari’s experience and expertise (not to mention generosity), Jari and Jere together, as well as Jyri my helpful host, were a dream Finnish owl team. All that remained was to pack my bag with midge hood, water bottle and ins
ect repellent.

  *

  From the start of June there is a window of two to three weeks when Eagle Owls move from the most sensitive phase of their nesting cycle – incubating eggs and raising tiny chicks – to when the chicks begin to fledge and might be a little harder to see, Jere told me. This trip was always going to be a challenge, I reflected on the plane at take-off. At home, Jenny was sitting her AS-level exams, and Benji was settling into his new job at a bakery in town. It seemed as though they both needed me; but then again, perhaps they would be better off without me. Benji was in his second week as a baker, his first job in the eighteen long months of his illness. With a supportive boss named Jonathan, who liked him very much, he was enjoying the challenge of a quiet café at the start of the summer season. But the day before I was due to leave I had a call. Benji had left for work on foot as usual but minutes later:

  ‘Mum, I’m in the park. Can you come and get me?’ His voice was weak. Stressed in the bright sun and hot weather he had collapsed on the way to work.

  I grabbed a blanket, jumped in the car and drove the two blocks to the park. Benji was slumped on a swing, the nearest support he could find, partially collapsed, and the one dog-walking passer-by had not noticed that anything was amiss. Why would you? A grown man, twitching and listing – you might conclude only one of two or three things: mental health, drugs or alcohol. The sad truth is that people feel suspicious and give these a wide berth. Summoning my reserves of calm I hurried up to him, hoping I could head off the seizure.

  ‘OK, Benji, do you think you can walk to the car? Lean on me.’

  I wriggled his limp arm over my shoulder and supported him as best I could (almost twice my weight, I realise now, weighed on my 9-stone frame) into the passenger seat.

  We made it to the step of the house and Benji staggered in and collapsed in the hall. What would have happened if this had been a different day, and I had already been in Finland? I couldn’t think like that. I gentled a pillow under his head so he was comfortable, wiped the sweat from his face, made sure no circulation was cut off anywhere, wrapped him in a light blanket and left him to recover in the breeze on the hall carpet while I went to make a cup of hot, sweet tea for both of us and think of some jokes to relax him and cheer him up.

  Laughter always helped Benji. One time we had all gone to see the comedian Bill Bailey perform. It was his latest comedy routine, ‘Qualmpeddler’, and an owl had been promised in the blurb. Partway through the second half, there had still not been any owls, and it was me who was having qualms. When Bill came to the finale of his set I was on the edge of my seat: where were the promised owls? Were they just a red herring or were they going to be live on set as the dramatic finale?

  Then Bill described going to a restaurant with his family in Beijing and being offered all kinds of interesting, live animals to eat. He listed them, one by one. The comedy tension rose, but my heart began to sink. The very bad feeling rising from my stomach took a turn for the worse as the final item was revealed exaggeratedly on a giant screen; standing tall, wings vampirically folded, tangerine eyes burning, its horn-like ears were rigid with satanic fury. An Eagle Owl.

  I like to think I would have done the same as Bill did that day. Quietly he paid for the Eagle Owl and explained that he wanted to take it away alive. The audience were enthralled at the awkwardness of this scenario. In any country this might be a terrible faux pas; how would the restaurateur react? On the other hand, a wild creature’s life was at stake. To the audience’s delight, Bill explained that the perplexed restaurant owner obligingly went to fetch a giant roll of Sellotape. He firmly fixed the hooked bill, the powerful wings and sharp talons (I don’t know how one might do this without serious injury to oneself or to the owl) and gave Bill the bird, trussed like an explosive papoose. Bill demonstrated its eyes, popping with rage. (The image of a sellotaped owl was almost too much for the now hysterical audience.) With a final protective layer of cardboard box around it (with breathing holes), the Bailey family trooped out of town and into the forest.

  There without ceremony they opened the package and cut the tape. On his iPhone Bill filmed the owl’s next move. For a moment it paused to take stock of its situation. Then its feathers puffed out and it shook its aviation gear to life. The 2-metre wings opened and the bird tensed, then sprang, rising freely against a moonlit Beijing sky. The audience whooped as in one final image, the magnificent wingspan dominated the night and the owl was free.

  The entire auditorium of Plymouth Pavilions, seating 4,000, witnessing this extraordinary tale, was overcome. Cheers, shouts and applause beat against my eardrums. I wanted to enjoy it, truly, but amongst the braying wall of laughter I sat motionless. A chasm was deepening somewhere inside me. I hung my wet face and my throat ached.

  *

  I am learning about the kindness of people. Right now it was the generosity of Finnish people. Take Jari Valkama for instance. Never having met me, he not only offered to meet me off the plane, and host me during my visit, but came to stay in the same hotel. He planned that we would have a meal in the hotel and talk owls, then he would take me to see the owl vaults in the museum the next day. But my Norwegian budget flight was delayed six hours when the handbrake of the aircraft became jammed before we even set out for the runway. I didn’t know planes even had handbrakes. I texted Jari with apologies. No problem, he promised kindly, he would wait for me at our agreed destination at the Hotel Helka and we’d have breakfast instead.

  The midsummer light had been streaming in through my Helsinki hotel window for the few hours that I had been lying there, sleeplessly staring out at the concrete and glass of the rumbling city. I was more than ready for the sumptuous buffet waiting downstairs. Finnish people, it turned out, love warm porridge sweetened with freshly gathered assorted berries. Very tall and very blond Jari in his plaid shirt and black jeans assured me, thoughtfully chewing through the Finnish silences, that in Finland children are brought up on porridge and berries.

  We walked a block through the stately concrete, tree-free parts of this utilitarian city to Jari’s workplace, the Natural History Museum. The temperature in Helsinki was a delight: the midsummer sun (that had dipped lightly toward the horizon somewhere around the hours of midnight and 1.30 to 2 a.m.) was blazing now; people in the street were smiling and relaxed. Everybody seemed to be wearing a summer dress or shorts and sandals. I donned my sunglasses to cover my puffy eyes.

  ‘I keep telling Vincenzo that Finnish Eagle Owls are bigger than Spanish ones,’ Jari told me, gaily shedding his initial shy veneer as we sat in his book- and stuffed-owl-lined office on the top floor of the Natural History Museum. It is true: the further north you go in the Eagle Owl’s European range, the larger the owls; due to the harsh climatic conditions here in Finland, the birds need to be bigger and more robust than their Spanish cousins to survive the long winters. In fact, Jari explained, the nominate species Bubo bubo occurs from here as far south as the Pyrenees, and further south we have the subspecies Bubo bubo hispanus which is smaller, paler and greyer, and which Vincenzo studies at his home near Seville in Andalusia. Apart from that, there are up to ten other subspecies in and near to Europe: the nominate race, Bubo bubo bubo, is found from Scandinavia and Northern Russia to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean but other subspecies of differing colourations and size also occur. There is Bubo bubo hispanus, Vincenzo’s Spanish variety; in north-west Russia we have Bubo bubo ruthenspaler, which is greyer and whiter; and a much larger version of that, the magnificent Bubo bubo sibiricus, a glowingly pale race that is distinctly larger than the nominate Bubo bubo. In this last subspecies, a large female can be almost twice the size of a small male.

  There are other subspecies winging their way across Asia Minor, and some hybridised forms that have interbred exist in southern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The desert Eagle Owls of Egypt and North Africa present perplexing problems in terms of borderline cases between species and subspecies in the desert and semi-desert races. Th
ese can be distinct in terms of colouration and characteristics (some also have different patterns of featheration on their feet and toes) but all have been found breeding in areas that join and overlap, and debates continue as more research is still to be done to join up the dots.

  With Jari’s information a massive spectrum of Eagle Owls spreads its wings in my mind, a buff-brown-rainbow from chocolate to silver, all with slightly differing colouration, size and characteristics. One thing unites the species, however: in Finland, as in much of Europe and the rest of the world, throughout history the Eagle Owl has been persecuted by humans.

  Hunting and deliberate elimination may be the reason it vanished from the British Isles, although we can only speculate about this as the changing climate may also have been a factor. More than any other owl, the Eagle Owl continues to be persecuted by farmers who feel their livestock might be threatened, and by game hunters, and in some areas of Scandinavia it has declined with worrying rapidity in recent years. There are other important factors to consider in terms of contemporary threats, Jari told me: accidental (or deliberate) poisoning; collision with traffic on roads; entanglement and death on power lines and tall fencing placed unfortunately close to its flight paths. Basically, this owl is so big that it cannot easily dodge hazards or swerve.

  While we talked, Jari quizzed me about my arrangements with Jere. Appearing unsatisfied, he graciously made a call to check on Jere to make sure he knew when and where to pick me up. Once the arrangements were all set and Jari was happy that Jere would indeed be there to meet me, we carried on our discussion. I couldn’t wait to see these creatures in their natural habitat in the forest, and Jari assured me that Jere knew where all the nests were and that we were guaranteed to find some fledglings.