Macbeth or Milne?

Symbol of evil or a loveable ditherer? Whatever your view of the owl, and we are talking tawny here, for some of us early winter is a time of interrupted sleep on account of their hooting. A time to light the fire and curl up with a good book. Whatever your volume of choice, if there is an owl in it, it won’t be a bland character: a harbinger of doom or a symbol of wisdom because of their human-like face.

But why are the tawnies calling in many parts of the village at the moment? Those parts, that is, still blessed with mature trees (oaks are good ones) providing holes where a rotten branch has split from the bole and there is deep leaf litter on the ground for the mice they feed on.

It’s the age-old activity of reproduction. First, it’s time for this year’s young to leave home (their home territory, that is) and set up their own. Reason? A given territory will only support a finite number of owls. It also prevents inbreeding, thus keeping the gene pool swirling to help the species evolve to survive in a changing environment. Thus, the twit-twooing is the female (who calls ‘keewick’) and the ‘whooing’ male advertising their presence to warn off other adults, including their own offspring, to maintain ownership of their bit of the woodland.

They need to stay put because, contrary to popular belief, owls can’t see in the dark. They can see better than us, but no animal can perceive light where there is none. They must learn the layout of their bit of the wood to make the most of what they can see of it. That way they can navigate around it. But pinpointing a brown mouse in brown leaf-litter on a moonless night is a tall order. So, owls have evolved excellent thee-dimensional hearing. Their satellite dish faces help direct sound into their super-sensitive ears which, unlike ours, are asymmetric – one side is higher than the other. This allows them to hear with astounding accuracy so they can gauge the distance as well as left/right positioning of their prey.

Rain and wind, therefore, are problems for them. Hunting becomes difficult. They have to fall back on their spacial knowledge. If they can’t maintain ownership and learn the layout of their territory,  they aren’t able to feed themselves or their young. After a windy, wet winter, they may not have fed well enough to be in breeding condition anyway, so won’t bother even to attempt it.

With a typical lifespan of four years, a missed breeding season is not catastrophic; with luck they’ll get another chance. Meanwhile, they probably adopt Owl’s advice to Pooh: “Come inside, we’ll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place.”