I have my being in silence but without noise I’m nothing. I love the night, the darker the better, but if I can’t see I can’t function. I long to stay forever in one spot, but to do so I must travel widely. And if I can truly seize the right place I will surely be able to seize the time.
Monday
You know, my hoot’s getting better. Much better. I’m beginning to sound like an owl. A proper grownup male tawny owl. I was hatched this year and set out to seek my fortune a few months back. I need a place of my own, so when I find a likely spot I stop and hoot. And for weeks it’s been sounding dreadful: the hoot of a real wet-behind-the-ears no-hoper. And when it’s answered by a macho hoot of a mature territorial male – I’m off.
So I hooted. And what a hoot it was… darkness-busting, don’t-mess-with-me hoot
Tuesday
This place is all right. Not the closed-canopy woodland I’d prefer but it’s OK: too-wit, alder carr along a riverbank with a good few nearby willows. I could make a go of this. So I hooted. And what a hoot it was. At last a real resonant darkness-busting, don’t-mess-with-me hoot. And better still, it was unanswered. Previous tenants gone.
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Wednesday
I’m doing OK here. Been catching rodents. Not a feast, but enough. Here’s how to catch them: keep silent. Listen out for the scrabble and the scratch. Get a cross-bearing from my beautifully asymmetric ears. And then down: down without a whisper of sound, for my wings are equipped with silencers. They don’t know what’s scoffed them.
Thursday
Already I’m learning this place. I can see in the dark, but not all that much better than those humans. I get around with a combination of intelligence and memory. By the time spring comes I’ll know this place like the back of my talons: every tree, every hunting perch, every obstacle, every killing zone. I’ll find my way through the darkened wood by interpreting scanty visual information in a meaningful way – like a human going for a nocturnal pee in his house.
Friday
I can feel the confidence building. I’ll be able to defend this place: home advantage and all that. Not just against other male tawnies: anyone. There’s a story we owls tell of a human photographer who got too close to a tawny and it took his eye out. He wrote a book called An Eye for a Bird. Apparently.
Saturday
I don’t go too-wit too-woo. I go too-wit and I got too-woo. The too-woo bit is my territorial hoot: and it means keep out. The too-wit is a contact call: it means I’m here, where are you? Someday, I’ll hear that call: and it will be an unattached young female ready to move into a bijou riverside residence. Why am I here? To-woo! By spring I’ll really have something to hoot about.
Tawny owl (strix aluco) CV
Lifespan Five years, more with good luck
Eating habits Anything that breaks the silence
Hobbies “Ineluctable modality” of the audible
Sexual preferences A call at midnight
Photograph by Alper Tuydes/Anadolu via Getty