Owl Sense

by Miriam Darlington

  ‘In Finland the Eagle Owl nests on the ground, and I’ve argued with the word ornithologists use in English to describe the young owls you’ll be seeing with Jere tomorrow,’ Jari told me. ‘When do we stop calling them nestlings, and begin to call them fledglings, for instance? The juvenile Eagle Owl can leave the nest at four to five weeks, they can walk away from the nest, but they don’t start to fly until nine or ten weeks … what do we call them at that in-between stage? They’re vulnerable for a whole month, on the ground before they can fly. They can and do wander, and if their nest is easily accessible – and it often is – they can get predated by a whole range of things. Raccoon dogs are the worst.’

  Jari told me how between 1928 and 1967 the Russians released 8,000 of these bushy, badger-like forest-dwellers in a bid to extend the population for hunting. The resourceful raccoon dog has been so successful that it has now reached the borders of France. The helpless owl chicks give themselves away at dusk and into the night as they call continuously to their parents. The many nocturnal predators like fox, lynx, wolf and bear are not hard of hearing, but increasingly it seems to be the raccoon dogs that can locate them most easily by following the calls.

  This was news to me: I hadn’t thought that the owls would nest so frequently on the ground; in France, possibly because they need to avoid a denser population of people and roads, I knew they perched on cliffs, tucked in high amongst protecting ledges and rocks; and in other countries they roosted right up in the trees. I had never heard of these raccoon dogs. They sounded like the owl’s worst nightmare. Despite its name, this alien species has spread from Russian fur farms and is not a raccoon but a canid, a primitive member of the dog family. It is native to China, Japan (where they are known as tanuki and in folklore can change shape) and across Siberia. Worst of all for the owls, Nyctereutes procyonoides – the Latin name means ‘night wanderer’ – has an expert sense of smell and superb hearing. Armed with terrier-like hunting skills this deadly forager has spread so rapidly and successfully in Finland that it has reached ‘capacity’. The short-legged predator gets up at dusk and trots around all night, just when the owls are active, nose to the ground, in search of anything at all to eat. That includes frogs, snakes, mice, voles, insects and molluscs as well as ground-nesting birds. With the unselfconscious nesting habit of the owl in Finland, it sounded as though the young owls did not stand a chance.

  That evening in my hotel room I was reading Jari’s research, and learned that in some areas of the taiga forest the owl has diminished by up to 60 per cent. The overall population is declining year on year in Finland, and could be around just 1,200–1,400 currently. Mining and hydroelectric schemes can interfere with their territory. In the south, increased road traffic means increased likelihood of collisions. Jari’s paper on large raptors highlighted just to what extent these birds are vulnerable. Big enough to be noticed and shot or poisoned, particularly to protect game, they are still seen in many places as competitors by humans. His research suggested just how interlinked our history is – so as well as the raccoon dogs, the owls have us to contend with – and showed how existing surveys suggest that raptors increase alongside game bird numbers. But not enough studies have been done to prove that raptors could be a limiting factor, so some caution, and much more research, is needed before we point the finger or lay blame. More than this, Jari’s paper pointed out, there are vast differences in the complexity of predator–prey relationships in different countries, varying considerably from northern Europe to the south where communities are far more complex. Where habitat loss has forced game birds and raptors into increasingly small and fragmented habitats, land use, biodiversity and sustainable development need to be understood before any conclusions can be drawn or ‘management plans’ created.

  When all is said and done, the knee-jerk reaction to eliminate predators remains, and perhaps it will always linger. Due to the age-old competition for prey between man and fellow predator, it still bubbles uncomfortably beneath the surface of our hard human skulls. Before the 1980s (when the Eagle Owl gained full protection in Finland), every second Eagle Owl corpse that was found had been shot. Now the persecution has lessened, but the Eagle Owls have also become less shy of people. Recently and increasingly they have put themselves in danger by inhabiting areas ever closer to increasing human populations. One of the main causes of death now appears to be electrocution by power lines. Later, I read that three out of five Eagle Owl corpses recovered, whose deaths can be reliably identified, die by electrocution on power lines or on roads. And it is not just the Eagle Owls that suffer in this way: Ural Owls and White-tailed Eagles often suffer the same fate. How intermingled our lives have become with this bird that was once considered an iconic species of the wilderness!

  After electrocution, the next highest death toll is collisions with vehicles. One paper of Jari’s shows a rash of fatalities around areas of denser human population, and these owls are often killed at dusk and dawn, times when their hunting coincides with rush hour. A rash of deaths scatters the map of southern Finland: ‘Limiting the amount of traffic appears to be an unrealistic option to reduce owl collisions, but perhaps it would be possible to change drivers’ attitudes such that they would reduce speed at high-risk areas,’ Jari suggests.

  But the odds did not look good. With milder winters (and the lack of protecting snow) and changes in farming practices in southern and western Finland, where the Eagle Owl has its stronghold, small mammal habitats have declined and the traditional vole cycles, in which the population peaks every three to four years, have almost vanished. The unpredictable conditions for owls in the countryside might explain why some years ago a pair took up residence on the top of the modern glass-and-steel Helsinki shopping centre, and they bred, producing three chicks. This I thought was a good sign. That surely in spite of everything they were adapting well to living alongside us?

  Jari explained. ‘It was a disaster. People liked them, they became like a local mascot, but there were so many dangers for them. Such a large raptor does not fare well so close to dense human population; the dangers are too many. Power lines and traffic mostly, but also disease. The male died of a herpes virus and to be honest I’m pleased that they’ve gone. It wasn’t good for them to be here. The chicks were not safe and they caused such problems: I lost count of how many times they wandered away from their ledge and fell out of the nest and the emergency services had to be called to pick them off the street and put them back.’

  ‘What did they feed on, in the middle of the city?’ I asked, thinking of the Exeter Eagle Owl.

  ‘They had plenty to eat – probably fed on the local rabbits. And they can become quite resistant to vermin poison: the Eagle Owls that live near urban areas in other parts of Finland, close to rubbish tips, feed on rats that have eaten poison.’

  I wondered, did that cause fatality?

  ‘No, they seemed from the toxicology tests to be largely unaffected. Every waste-disposal site probably had a pair of Eagle Owls. There was a limitless supply of Rattus norvegicus for them there. But now there are fewer open waste sites: where in the 1990s there were more than a thousand, now there are less than one hundred. EU directives dictate how we dispose of waste and we don’t often stop to think how this affects the dependent or adapted wildlife. Now that organic waste is on the decline, sites are more sterile, and alongside these changes, the vermin species, the gulls and the owls have declined as well.’ In consequence, the Eagle Owls have come even closer to human settlements, to quarries and even to towns. It reminded me of what has happened in Britain with urban gulls.

  Out in the woods, where I’d be going with Jere, clear-cut areas of forest make ideal sites for the owls, as they often prefer fewer trees and open spaces that are easier to hunt in. But these can quickly regrow and become unsuitable, forcing the owls out again. The owls are site loyal but also very sensitive, so could this aspect put stress on their breeding? I wondered. Jari passed me some of his studies to read later.
These suggested that the owls, who may have a territory of fourteen square kilometres, may move a few kilometres to nest elsewhere within their territory, but this is hard to prove. ‘We need more ringing data. But the owls are clever and they remember being trapped. Once an owl has been caught you will not get it again,’ Jari laughed. ‘They remember everything. When the female is on her eggs she is hyper-vigilant and knows her immediate environment intimately. They form a sound map of their territory, using mostly their hearing but also their eyesight, and notice if anything at all changes, even at night – and they have very good night vision – so their powers of observation are prodigious. Coupled with this they are highly sensitive, but this can actually make it easier to find fledglings to ring: the parents make a big fuss if anyone approaches their vicinity and their nervous reactions give away the nest site.’

  Normally nest sites can be located by Jari and his team through a variety of clues, including feathers and pellets, but the adults will often give the chicks away by reacting strongly to any intruder. ‘They might perform threat displays, so ringers and researchers can locate them by their particular nervous call, a kind of whistling, and they may even perform a broken-wing act, a total giveaway that there are young nearby,’ Jari said.

  The next day Jari took me down to the vaults of the museum. Here we could look more closely at the owl collection. He showed me the way the owl’s wing moults and how we can try to divine its age (Eagle Owls have four or five different age classes from nestling to senior) through its feather moults; in older birds we can begin to age them by which primary flight feathers are missing or have grown back in and look slightly different. Jari displayed those thoughtful silences as he showed me the wings, running his fingers along the fourteenth and fifteenth flight feathers of one that has been preserved fully extended; some of the feathers looked subtly darker, less faded, perhaps newer.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ he concluded. ‘An older bird, yes, mature but of indeterminate age; not clear exactly with this specimen.’

  On the way back we passed the mammal vaults and Jari saw me looking at the labels: Gulo gulo. Wolverine. I had always wanted to see a wolverine. This might be my only chance.

  ‘Just let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see,’ Jari offered, noticing my sightline.

  ‘Don’t get me started.’

  ‘That sounds like an invitation.’ Jari cheerily slid open a door to reveal an Aladdin’s cave of furs. ‘In you go. Have a look.’

  As I stepped in, a heap of exuberantly long, spotted tails tumbled around my shoes. These were not from Finland. I ran my hands along the snow leopards. Shot amongst high mountainscapes far from here: Siberia, Afghanistan, Tibet and Bhutan. Along with the Eagle Owls, these large predators now suffer the same threats: conflict with humans, poaching, loss of prey and climate disruption. I closed my eyes amongst twenty hung-up leopards, blinded by their fur, their bouquets of claws, their memory of high Himalayas and men stalking, booted, tweed-clad, armed with rifles.

  Jari quietly opened the next sliding door: rows and rows of wolf. Now as we looked my chest felt heavy. Jari stood beside me as we witnessed the shadowy-black pelts, our eyes slowly ranging over the silvers and greys and even the white furs. After the snow leopard room, and the wolf room, it was the shine of the wolverine pelts that took my breath away; they were as bright as if they had been caught just yesterday, a rich, gleaming mahogany with swirls of chocolate-brown and black. I reached out to touch the famous ice-proof fur. Then the lynx, the colour of oatmeal, with its dangle of chunky snowshoe paws that had once padded stealthily over long-melted winter wastes.

  Jari had been so kind, so generous with his time, so honest and revealing about his work at the museum. Back at my hotel I showered the dusty film of formaldehyde from my skin, and gave myself some time for silence, lying on my bed a while with my owl notes. A watery square of city-light poured in and warmed me, the captured glowing brightness of the undying midnight sun.

  *

  Getting the train in a country where you only speak three words and two phrases of the language was always going to be a risk. (I queued for half an hour to ask for my ticket only to be told by a perplexed official that no, this was a bank, and the tickets were over there on the other side.) But I had to go north if I wanted to meet Jere. He had promised to meet me off the train and take me to find Eagle Owls.

  In his day job, Jere is a lumberjack. When Jari had told me this it made me feel safe; I would not be plunging into the wild backwoods with any old person. Jere would know his way, he would know the dangers. When we met I could tell he was as fit and fearless as a young mountain goat, but in the boiling heat of midsummer, he would expect me to keep up, no excuses. It was stiflingly hot when we eventually set off, in Jere’s rattly car, and the midday sun was relentless. We drove with the windows down and soon we left the dazzle of the main road to rumble along a leafy dirt track. Is this a farm track, I wondered, or were all of the roads gravel in this part of Finland?

  ‘All the roads are like this,’ Jere said, surprised at my question. We pulled up on a verge and piled quietly out. ‘The roads are like this because in winter they have to survive the snow.’

  I tried to imagine how it might be here, in this bird-thronged, singing, green, sweltering glade, how harsh it might be in the middle of winter. Dark all day long, water frozen, pine-scented trees laden with ice. For the owls, hunting is good even in those days of twenty hours of darkness – even when there is only the tiniest bit of twilight; with their acute hearing they still can hear the voles scrabbling and nibbling in their tunnels beneath the snow.

  The first nest site was in a bright clearing, a ferny, bramble-covered area with many tree stumps; a clear-felled part of forest that the owls like, Jere told me, speaking softly so as not to disturb the owls. ‘You’ll need to put on those long trousers you brought,’ he added, tucking the ankles of his lumberjack trousers tightly into the tops of his tall lace-up boots; if there were going to be bloodthirsty insects, they were likely to be right here.

  There was no path: Jere took off straight into the middle of this rock-strewn wilderness; I waded in his footsteps, struggling to keep up. As we strode through the jungle of ferns, bilberry and willowherb, spiders and ants and flies skittered away, midges flew up, and I sprayed a fresh layer of insect repellent over my face and arms. We came upon a flattened grassy area with a strong whiff rising from it, as if an animal had been rolling there. I’d seen patches like this at home, where deer sleep, but this was much, much larger.

  ‘Moose,’ Jere said, his grey eyes staring into the shadows between the trees. ‘We probably frightened it away. They don’t like people when they have young.’

  The moose-patch was still warm. I followed Jere’s gaze into the trees thinking of the bulk of a female moose; at a leggy two metres tall and weighing a hefty 400 kilos moose are the largest in the deer family and one of the biggest mammals in Europe. I did not fancy coming face to face with a protective moose mother and her jagged, prehistoric antlers.

  Jere led me to a boulder with feathers scattered beneath it and, oddly, one abandoned white egg, about the size of a goose’s, my first sight of an Eagle Owl egg. Jere searched around amongst brambles and pine needles, and looked concerned. ‘I think this nest has been abandoned. Don’t worry, chicks guaranteed at the next site.’

  Off he loped, his wiry frame agile and light-footed. The owls are very sensitive when they are nesting and will quickly abandon a nest if anything disturbs them.

  Jere’s next site was a long walk through fields where we startled a velvet-antlered young buck. As we moved quietly up into more woods we spotted a movement on a tree trunk; a magnificent black woodpecker (a first for me! tick!) its streak of red showing as a bright ruby cap against its coal-dark plumage and the rough bark of a tall pine.

  Deeper into the trees and then I found myself teetering along the side of a cliff that plunged down to a mud-brown lake a hundred feet below. Fortunately
the sides of this cliff were covered in spindly trees and rocks enabling us to clamber along. We came to a ledge that was covered in owl feathers, a predated Long-eared Owl, and even the remains of a hedgehog in some pellets, the whole thing eaten, spines and all! The Eagle Owl had made easy work of this prickly meal! Respect.

  As I said, Jere had stamina, and next we found ourselves scrambling up the side of a quarry. ‘I’ve taken you to some beautiful places,’ Jere said. ‘… This one, not so beautiful.’ He scampered up the side of a cliff which had perilous cracks in it. They looked like the inside wall of my mum’s house that time it needed underpinning. Huge loose boulders crumbled and teetered as if they could crack off and fall at any minute.

  ‘I’m coming up a different way! That doesn’t look safe!’ I decided. When I reached the peak I saw Jere standing up, smiling, already holding two chicks like a pair of twin babies, one in each arm. As I approached, one managed to disengage itself and skittered away. Not quite fledged at eight weeks, it ran clumsily with hunched, part-adult wings, and ended up scrambling all the way into a shallow lake at the bottom of the cliff.

  ‘Hold this!’ Jere sprang into emergency mode. He thrust the other owlet into my hands. Suddenly I was holding the most ferocious and unwilling baby I have ever seen. I stood very still, trying to exude calm and authority in this precarious but highly responsible position. While Jere was chasing the stray baby, I snuggled my owl tightly into the crook of my arm, gripping its legs and using my front to block its wings from opening. It was warm, sweaty and heavy, about the size of a Jack Russell terrier, just as strong and much more dangerous-looking. As long as I could keep its wings safely folded by its sides we’d be fine. We stared into one another’s eyes. I did my best to exude motherly rather than unfriendly vibes, but it clapped its beak threateningly, glared and hissed like a viper. I tried not to flinch, holding the thick, twiggy ankles firmly together as I had learned to do with the Barn Owls back at home, but this baby seemed to be in possession of more ideas on how to fight back than the owls I had got to know. All it wanted was to sink some of its deadly toolkit into any part of my flesh. Nevertheless, it was impossibly downy still, its floaty beige covering like mohair, soft and clammy in my hands. Tiny wisps of down were detaching themselves and floating up to my face, tickling my nose and eyes, and with no hands free there was nothing I could do. With very few adult primary feathers coming in at the tips of its wings it could not fly yet, and eyed me angrily, not taking its orange glare away for a minute, like a gremlin that has not quite come into its full power but knows it won’t be long.