Owl Sense

by Miriam Darlington

  ‘I don’t know. I think it will be very close. People have been very confused and misinformed … I’m worried. We’re like a dysfunctional family in Europe, aren’t we?’ I said, swallowing hard. ‘We love to hate one another, but really, it’s love.’

  Thoughtful and gloomy nods passed around the table, the atmosphere thick with melancholy.

  ‘I think people are going to vote based on something that’s all wrong.’

  It was the same in France. The immigration hysteria, the scapegoating and faulty economic advice flying around, for us from figures such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. The French were experiencing the same from the likes of Marine Le Pen and the Front National. I didn’t think it was going to go well for the Europhiles. France was in a similar political turmoil that nobody was enjoying. We were together on this.

  ‘No, whatever happens, we’re like brothers, our two countries,’ Thierry said kindly, seeing my watery eyes. He slopped more red wine into my glass. ‘We love to fight over things, but when there’s a problem, we’re right there, together, always.’

  Thierry raised his glass warmly, his brown eyes downcast and emotional. The others joined us and Thierry’s fork appeared on my plate to help with the spare rib that I couldn’t finish.

  We wiped our plates with bread, the dessert slipped down in a flash and with that, the evening’s outing began. We went out to find Barn Owls, and to listen for the wheezing cry of Long-eared Owlets, but were distracted by Bufo calamita, natterjack toads! It started with the serenading song of toads, or le crapaud calamite in French. In sombre mood I thought that was a prophetic name, perhaps meaning ‘the toad of calamity’. Although the heavy rain that night seemed calamitous (along with the impending Brexit), in fact it meant no such thing. As we stood in the rain and listened, from somewhere low down at the edge of the field, a chorus of voices started up. ‘Our sense of hearing is so much better in the dark,’ Gilles explained, ‘when we’re not distracted.’ All at once, many voices rose, and they spread, discordant, urgent, like an out-of-tune Mexican wave travelling rapidly along the ditch until they were a throng that battered our ears.

  I looked up the translation later: the Latin name comes from the Greek kalamos, meaning reeds, referring obviously to the creature’s habitat. The toad of the reeds. In Britain they are so very rare, hanging on in pockets and puddles on reedy dunes and rare heaths, but here they must have been hundreds, if not thousands. The wheezes of the Long-eared young took second place, I’m afraid, and after we had played a twiggy game of hide-and-seek with them amongst the veiling leaves and twigs of a row of lime trees (it was impossible to see them, even though they were so close by) we withdrew, our spirits dampened in an increasing deluge of rain. But the rain, if it kept the owls hidden, to my delight brought the toads out even more. As we drove away, in the yellow of the car headlamps they crossed the road, like nuggets of gold scattered in our beam. Gilles drove slowly and weaved around them, but at my gasp, he put his foot on the brake and leapt out to move them off the road. Just in front of our wheels a large specimen glared up, and he clasped it tightly in his hands and thrust it in through the car window, right up under my nose. Nubbed with emerald green all along the back, it was gem-like, a colour I had never thought possible in nature, and its eyes were molten bronze. Through the window with that bright amphibian came the smell of rain, moss and algae; the fresh, wet odour penetrated my nose so powerfully that it stayed with me all night.

  The next day it was the almighty song of nightingales drifting through the open car window. I put my head out to listen. They were belting it out so loud, their song resonated as we drove, the varied pitch and melody so powerful I could catch it each time we passed one in a thicket, ringing out above the car engines, above the wind and even above our conversation.

  ‘Do you want to stop?’ Gilles said, noticing my head leaning out of the window. ‘We’ll stop and listen to them.’

  The convoy ground to a halt and we all got out and stood amongst the ash and hazel thickets by the side of the road, our ears absorbed by the glorious tunes of the nightingales. I felt my stomach go into free-fall at the enchantment of it. This plain brown bird utters its dizzying song from cover so we couldn’t see them, but so powerful is its song that it does not need to show itself or display. Scientists have shown that the complex, resonant tunes have such force that they affect the female bird’s brain. The male’s impressive vocal range can produce up to 1,160 syllables (compared to the skylark’s 341) and the females are not duped – song conveys a very honest message about the capacities of the singer, and the more operatic this crooner is, the more elaborate his songs, the more likely he is to charm and seduce the female. They were certainly charming me. We stood immobile and listened, all of us, as the miraculous music resonated, tingling through our every sense.

  ‘I think the English name is better than the French – le rossignol,’ Gilles said finally. ‘It sings like the storm at night: night-in-gale.’

  When you go to a different country and start to break down language barriers, a whole new form of poetry can spring up. In bending and twisting expression, playing with words and phrases to meet and connect up the disconnections, you can find new imaginative words, hidden onomatopoeias. Think about the onomatopoeia in owl calls: our ‘Too-wit too-woo’ that the Tawny duo makes in English turns out even better in French. The Tawny Owl is la chouette hulotte, with a beautiful sound sense to the name that echoes the bird’s call. But there is also a children’s song in France that replicates the ‘too-wit too-woo’ duet. However, this simple song also proliferates a misunderstanding about owls. It is more complicated than the British misunderstanding, where we simply conflate the male and female call-and-response into a single cry of ‘too-wit too-woo’; in France it is a muddle of not only gender but also species. In the French language there are two words for owl, the masculine hibou and the feminine chouette, and in the song the ‘male’ owl, le hibou, takes a romantic turn with the ‘female’ owl, la chouette:

  Hou hou, fait le hibou

  chouette, chouette, se dit la chouette,

  voilà un bel ami, un bel oiseau de nuit.

  Hou hou, fait le hibou,

  chouette, chouette, se dit la chouette,

  allons nous marier ce soir dans la forêt.

  The song begins with the male hoot, then the female hoot, and then they make friends, finishing on the line: ‘Let’s go and get married in the forest.’ But the misconception here is that une chouette is a female hibou. It isn’t. Unbeknownst to generations of French schoolchildren, in reality the two owls will never be able to be together. Where both words mean a generic owl, they’re not just a different gender, in fact they are separated by genetics and taxonomy. The two names represent visual differences and show that the two are different species. The hibous are the group of owls with ear tufts, and the chouettes are the tuft-less owls, so sorry, children, as biology would have it sadly they could never get married.

  That sorted out, we drove up a sinuous single-track road into the Vercors plateau, and followed joyfully at Gilles’s heels as he strode through narrow paths deep into the mountain forest. Today, at last, we would finally see Pygmy Owls.

  It was spring so most of the owls would be feeding young, and the adult owls would be more easily visible, busily commuting along predictable routes with a cargo of decapitated voles and slaughtered songbirds to sustain the broody females and their hungry progeny.

  Having seen Gilles’s film, I recognised the location. I knew that due to his detailed survey he would know every nest hole, every breeding pair for the whole area. Pausing only to listen to the song of warblers, to point out a black woodpecker or a bullfinch, Gilles explained about the complex and highly protected ecosystem of the area. No interference is allowed, no agriculture, and no tree felling. Any tree that falls is left, and nature is allowed to make its own way. There are no roads – only subtle walking trails wend their way through parts of the park, but they are rarely used,
and vehicles are not allowed at all. In winter, the only access is on foot, then on cross-country skis. In summer, the sparse network of paths that cross the forest are mainly used by animals, and the only human habitation is a shepherd’s hut or two. The whole reserve is just about as pristine as it is possible to be, and highly precious because of that.

  We watched our steps in this fragile habitat, careful to leave only the lightest of footprints. At given points, in order to attract the owl so we could see it, Gilles sounded the special staccato call through a high, resonant flute called an ocarina, an ancient instrument that would originally have been made of wood, clay or even chamois horn. The exact note to play on an ocarina is a high whistle of F or ‘Fa’ that mimics the male’s unique territorial cry.

  We assembled in a mossy clearing, all of us settling quietly into the green pool of leaves and lichens, listening to the breathing of the air through the trees. Why is it possible to feel so calm in such a wild, remote place? There is something enchanting about the way light and colour work on the senses. The green shade and shafts of warmth both calm you and leave you alert to every smallest sound. Pine branches sifted sunlight, wood ants trickled, bird wings flitted. Our breath slowed into the trance that the forest invites. Gilles put his lips to the ocarina and whistled. We waited.

  Then suddenly a flicker on a branch, a scuttle of tiny talons and he was there. The local male had leapt into our space and our hearts leapt with him. I wanted to shout with delight, so perfect and so improbable was this tiny owl. Perched with concentrated outrage on a branch above our heads, ignoring us, he had presented himself to investigate the call of the perceived intruder. His head spun around, searching. Our long lenses had time to capture the speckled charm of his miniature pear shape; the long, barred tail twitching with compressed anger, the head revolving what appeared to be a fantastic 360 degrees as he scanned furiously, trying to locate the imposter. As he turned, we could see the false face, the pair of white-rimmed patches on the rear of his scalp, giving the unsettling impression that we were being spied on from every angle.

  Pygmy Owls are highly vocal, and if the male feels threatened he will increase his calls – which now he did, with a kind of a kind of ‘peeu – peeu – peeu’, a whistle uttered regularly until the unwanted visitor has been intimidated enough to withdraw. I noticed that this territorial call resembled the monotone call of the bullfinch, and the female’s was a little softer and higher. As we had seen, the male could easily be attracted, and was a pugilistic little fellow. ‘Sometimes,’ Gilles said, ‘he can even be lured into attacking a human. But we won’t try that.’ When threatened by competitors the male will display by calling, but he might also alter his plumage; puffing up like a loosely ruffled pompom he’ll try to intimidate owl-intruders. The feathers also loosen and puff out in this way when the owl is dozing or sunbathing.

  Very little had been known about the Pygmy Owl before Gilles’s study. Even hikers, stopping in their tracks to listen to its strange, monotone whistle, had not seen it, so quick and cryptic an owl it is. Often perched at the vantage point at the very top of a spruce tree, this tiny owl is the size of a pine cone. You need to follow the call, and then deploy binoculars or a scope to pick it out. When this owl finally flew, I noticed it fleeted along with the same swooping flight as a woodpecker. And like the woodpecker it needs to nest in holes in trees. The Pygmy Owl requires a very specific habitat – open spruce forest, with a patchwork of clearings and old deadwood where greater spotted woodpeckers leave handy nest holes that it can occupy. The diameter of the hole is what is important: on average this is roughly circular, and at around 4.5 centimetres the narrow entrance is what the owl depends upon: it is tight enough to prevent predators like the pine marten and other birds of prey entering. Without the great spotted and green woodpeckers, there would be no Pygmy Owl.

  As we watched, the owl flew off to search for more prey for his nest-bound mate. We waited, again in silence, and then we were breathless as he returned minutes later with a decapitated vole clenched tightly in his long claws. He perched, and called softly, with that same staccato, piping whistle and then a kind of gentle ‘bibbling’ as if to persuade her to come out. With a smaller, higher voice, the female replied, slightly muffled from within the nest hole. Would we see her? We waited on tenterhooks and then with another leap of the heart we saw her feathered face appear at the entrance to the nest hole. There she was, expectant, hungry and ready to receive her delivery. She looked slightly grubby and grey around the edges, a little bedraggled, even. Not surprising, I suppose, if you’re stuck all day on eggs while your mate brings you food parcels. She came out, wriggling herself head first, then wings and feet through the narrow hole, flew to a nearby twig, and fluffed out in full view. The male, waiting with his offering, brought the vole to her whole (although without its head, for ease of consumption) and then, wondrously, instead of eating the vole herself, back she went into the nest, taking the vole meal out of sight. A small commotion from inside confirmed it. There were chicks! The male flitted away once more. Oh, how I would have loved to see the owlets, but they remained safely tucked in their cavity, veiled from our view.

  I was struck by how close we were to the nest, and yet the owls had totally ignored us. More than any other owl we had seen, it was as if our presence was irrelevant and we were not a threat. Perhaps they did not even know what we were – just more harmless earthbound mammals like the deer or wild boar that they would have been used to seeing fossicking around on the forest floor. And so no notice was taken of us and we withdrew, leaving only our footprints behind.

  How far would the male go to find food? I wondered. Gilles explained that a pair of Pygmy Owls might occupy a territory of 1 to 1.4 square kilometres; the male calls to mark the edge of his boundary, which itself will be divided into roosting area, nesting area and hunting area. The small territory explained the fast arrival of our male: he had no difficulty hearing our whistle and arrived almost immediately.

  As we quietly withdrew to go and find Tengmalm’s Owls, Gilles explained more about his study. The coniferous forests of the plateau, at 1,300 to 1,500 metres above sea level, are an isolated pocket of habitat left behind after the last period of glaciation. The Eurasian Pygmy Owl is considered to be a relic of the glacial age. During the last Ice Age, many species adapted to the conditions and thrived in this part of France as the tundra and taiga conditions suited them. When the glaciers receded, many species followed, except for some isolated pockets like this, where cold, mountain habitat remained. On the high plateaus of the Vercors region, the Pygmy Owls found themselves cut off, but were well adapted and easily thrived here, in spite of their small size. They are more diurnal than the other owls that share its territory; the more nocturnal Tawny, Tengmalm’s and the Long-eared can be found here as well, and feed on the same prey so could be arch-competitors, but since the Pygmy is diurnal it has more of a chance to avoid its enemies. The Pygmy can hunt by sight in the snow, find shelter amongst the mature pines and has very weatherproof plumage; it is also found in the European taiga or ‘snow forest’, which is part of the world’s second-largest biome after the oceans. It wraps the planet in a wide northerly belt, in Europe covering much of Sweden, Finland and Norway and stretching over some of the higher mountains of central Europe, continuing over Eastern Europe and Siberia to northern Mongolia and Hokkaido. In its American reaches it is known as boreal forest, and here it covers vast areas of Canada. So taiga and boreal were the same eco-region, just with different names. In these regions, the climate is sub-Arctic, and there is a very large temperature range between the seasons.

  This Pygmy Owl is a true wilderness bird, then, and interestingly, because of the isolation of the owl’s territory in France, very little attention was paid to it here. The sedentary population was only discovered to be breeding on the plateau in 2009 when Gilles was commissioned to undertake his three-year study. Now thirteen occupied nests have been identified so far, all located using the oca
rina lure. Gilles noted that only the mating call can truly be imitated with the ocarina, and this has the desired effect, quickly attracting belligerent males to arrive, plumage puffed up and head feathers formed into a rectangular shape, while the head turns, rapidly and repeatedly searching for the intruding male. With radio tracking (and it’s no easy task to fit a device to such a tiny raptor) the size of the males’ territories was discovered, along with close observation of its breeding and nesting habits. Gilles noted that during the breeding season, the most mating calls were heard at dawn and dusk, in March and April. Incubation was in May, and locating the inhabited nests enabled him to close in on the nest sites and complete his study. Gilles has observed that, unusually in owls, the female always clears out the nest after around five days, as the fur and prey remains (usually voles, but also small birds or reptiles), pellets and faeces have built up to such a degree that they can begin to attract parasites or might stifle the cavity of the nest. These field signs can then be used as proof of nesting. After fledging, the pair share caring for the young, but after fifteen days it is only the male who carries on feeding them.

  Most importantly, these half-pint-sized owls are an indicator species, and one that in this uniquely protected area is not threatened by any human impact. The success of these birds in their untouched environment shows just what we humans can do when we protect an area properly, hand in hand with nature. The presence of this unique little tribe of the forest proves that for now, the richly interlinked ecosystem of the forest, from the mycelium in the earth and the wood ants nesting in the fallen pine needles, to the lichens and the woodpeckers, is in the best of health.