Owl Sense
Page 29
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
One winter night after Christmas I had finished writing my pages. The owl book was written. But I woke shivering in the early hours. The feather duvet had fallen away and in through the window came white moonlight; for a moment I felt freighted with fear. Heart thumping I looked to Rick and his face was pale. I reached out but he was warm, and there were his shoulders, muscular, vulnerable, and the shoulder blades wingless and human. There was the steady beating pulse, along with the pulse of my own. I thought of the snowy tundra, the long migrations of the Snowy Owls, the long life-paired journeys of other migrants, and the distances of the terns, redwings, albatrosses and firecrests, the journeys so many make to stay alive. I thought of the journey we were still on as a family. Like the birds, we belong to a fragile, fragmented world.
The memory of the owl’s scratchy calls pressed into my inner ear. The field outside on the edge of town threw a pale mist over the new estate that had replaced the meadow. Once wings had lit the tall grass that grew there, the screech of an owl had ripped the air. I thought I wouldn’t have a chance of seeing them any more as they quartered the field, their low flight no longer brushing the grass. But amongst the newly built landscape of houses, a host of native trees were growing. Around the mature oak, a protecting layer of young trees had been planted, brand new lungs for the new estate. An apple orchard, some hazel and field maples, as well as English oaks, viburnums and wild cherry trees. At the edge of the houses, as the roots delved down, minute fissures and cracks were already there in the new concrete. Everywhere, seeds had finely sown themselves, and in spring the green tips of grasses and weeds would find their way back, an unstoppable prairie, rising, soon to be swallow-skimmed, buzzing, and by then, instead of an owl, a small new dog would curl comfortingly around our bare feet, and we’d realise our entire world was re-growing and re-orienting, as if:
The end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. ELIOT
‘Little Gidding’
Flowers and Owls
with some debt to W. H. Auden
VI GALE
About these they weren’t all wrong either,
those minor masters and unsung scholars
who tramped the old world countryside
with rucksack and staff, resting
face down in sweet meadow grass,
sleeping under stars and hoots
at the forest’s edge.
We’re taken by their work –
often anonymous, inaccurate, anthropomorphic –
herbarium and bestiary, song and myth,
carved foliage and replicated bird.
We can almost hear them as they
munched coarse bread at noon
and pondered: Why aren’t
there owls in Iceland? How
do flowers bloom in permafrost?
Are these sooty emissaries
from the Nether World?
And why in Heaven’s Order such diversity:
Great, small, speckled and barred –
graveyard haunter, messenger of doom,
horned dark bird of poetry and death.
How to turn his evil into magic?
Make a potion of it: Owl’s broth
for whooping cough, raw owl’s egg
down the drunk – he’ll sober up for life.
Nail the spread wings to any shed,
save it from lightning and hail.
Tawny, spotted, stippled, and dappled
like fish in the brook. This bird’s wise
and deep as words in a book.
Owl-light. Owl’s claw. Owl’s clover.
Ours are the heavy questions. Will history
hold us up? Will exploration save this earth?
We signal other galaxies, probe the ocean floors,
perfect our own destruction. And breathe
a moment from that simpler time when men
were sometimes wrong in fact, but right
in principle. They dealt with fear,
noted, took delight, pressed on.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It was hope that sent me after all these owls, hope that people who share my values, and some who don’t, would be encouraged to go out and experience the wild in new ways. I hope that with all these words, some good will come to readers and increase their curiosity for, understanding of and sympathy with the natural world. This is what we need right now. This book isn’t just about owls, it is about our relationship with owls, with one another and ultimately with the planet. It is about coming to our senses at a time when that seems like an almost insurmountable challenge.
Without the team of loved ones, friends, editors and colleagues this story would not have made nearly as much sense. Rebecca Solnit has said that we need stories that do not gloss over the ugly damage out there, but that do not portray it as all there is either. She has said that to write against defeatism in a world where there is too much defeatism is to tap into the inner life of our situation. I sallied forth with this idea in mind, and my adventures and discoveries were shaped not only by what I experienced, but also by what I read and heard. A nature book like this is always part of a long conversation and my gratitude goes to all those writers, ornithologists, academics, poets and critics who have contributed to my understanding, challenged me, sparked ideas, offered inspiration and given me hope; they are too many to mention. Among those to thank who were most formative, in no special order, they are: Laura Hassan for believing in this book; my brilliant and patient editor Kat Ailes; and my wonderful agent Clare Conville; all my friends and colleagues at Plymouth University; my family; Rick, Benji and Jenny, my dogs Barney and Dill for reminding me to go outside when I seemed too tied to my desk; and for encouragement, wisdom, enthusiasm, education, inspiration and support, whether it was momentary or long term: Laura Traister, Karine Polwart, David Lindo, Robert Macfarlane, Mark Cocker, John Lister Kaye, Hugh Warwick, David and Frances Ramsden, Matthew Twiggs, Luke Sutton and everyone at the Barn Owl Trust; Gilles Trochard, Christine Bettahar, Stephen Powles and Badger, Shirley Darlington, Oliver Darlington, Sue Fasquelle, Jonathan Darlington, Rick Mundy, Shaun Lambert, Paul Riddle, Milan Ruzic, Heimo Mikkola, Mike Toms, Emily Joachim, Jari Valkama, Jere Toivola, Vincenzo Penteriani, Heimo Mikkola, Eloise Malone and all at Effervescent, all my wonderful readers at the Times, as well as my editor Mike Smith; Lisa Hosking, Jan Felmingham, Martin and Claudia Kelsey, Anita Morris and Murray; for their wonderful contributions of poetry: Vi Gale, even though she is no longer with us; Caroline Carver, Kenneth Steven, Jennifer Hunt, and Rosie Corlett. All the owls who put up with being bothered, ringed, handled, measured, intruded upon or stared at, you truly opened my eyes. And last but not least our mother hen, Wendy Smaridge, always in our hearts.
READINGS
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PERMI
SSIONS
With grateful thanks to Jonathan Cape and Liz Berry for the use of ‘Owl’; Faber and Faber for T. S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’; to Kenneth Steven, Rosie Corlett, Caroline Carver and Jennifer Hunt personally for their poems; Karine Polwart and Hedri Music for ‘King of Birds’; and E. O. Wilson and Harvard University Press for quotation from Biophilia.
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL
ASSOCIATIONS AND WEBSITES
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds: www.rspb.org.uk/
British Trust for Ornithology: www.bto.org/
Birdlife International: www.birdlife.org/
The Barn Owl Trust: www.barnowltrust.org.uk/
The Barn Owl Conservation Network: www.bocn.org/
The Barn Owl Centre of Gloucestershire: www.barnowl.co.uk/
Hungry Owl Project: hungryowl.org/
The Owl Foundation: www.theowlfoundation.ca/
National Audubon Society: www.audubon.org/
Ligue Pour la Protection des Oiseaux: www.lpo.fr/
Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia: www.birdlife.org/europe-and-central-asia/partners/serbia-bird-protection-and-study-society-serbia
The Hawk and Owl Trust: hawkandowl.org
UK Little Owl Project: www.littleowlproject.uk/
Nature Tours in Finland: Finnature.com/
Jari Peltomaki bird photography in Finland: jaripeltomaki.com/
Burrowing Owl Conservation Network: burrowingowlconservation.org/
The International Owl Society: www.international-owl-society.com/
The Owl Hall of Fame: www.theowlfoundation.ca/
The Owl Pages: www.owlpages.com/
The Owls Trust: www.theowlstrust.org/
Wild Owl: www.wildowl.co.uk/
World Owl Trust: www.owls.org/
Monfrague National Park:
turismoextremadura.com/viajar/turismo/en/explora/Monfraguee-National-Park/
Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder: The Epilepsy Society and the Epilepsy Foundation have some useful advice about nonepileptic seizures. There are also NEAD Facebook groups and PNES carer forums and YouTube channels where you can get support about this little known and isolating condition.