An owl? Or just a gatepost? In my experience, it’s usually a gatepost. So as I drove home across the Somerset Levels, returning from my first starling murmuration of the year, I was convinced that the owl-shaped lump a few yards away was just that. It was also dark brown, unlike the barn owls I sometimes see, which glow like beacons long after sunset.
Stopping the car, I lifted my binoculars and found myself face to face with a real, live short-eared owl (Asio flammeus), a bird I hadn’t seen in Somerset for several years. Once fairly frequent winter visitors to southern England, like so many other species from farther north and east their numbers have fallen as they stay put on, or close to, their breeding grounds.
Whenever I see any owl, I’m struck by the human quality of their gaze, because their eyes face forward like ours, not to the side like most birds. This time, my sighting was frustratingly brief: as soon as our eyes met, it flicked its wings and floated away into the darkness.
My sons have also enjoyed some owl encounters recently: first a barn owl, floating low over the local golf course as they played a round together, then a tawny, perched next to a lane near our home.
Charlie and George would never call themselves birders but I’m glad that some of my enthusiasm has rubbed off and they can not only identify birds but even seem excited about them – especially owls.
