Country diary: the barn owl can be a winged, silent hunter throughout the night

owards dusk, drizzly cloud had cleared on the eastern moors; now black night was hardening to frost. Rattling briskly along under Hollin Bank, I have almost reached the junction through the woods of North Lees if a sudden whiteness appeared from over my right shoulder: a wedge of a bird, all head along with delicate tapering, as light as snowfall. The barn owl pirouetted inside of a tight arc just while in front of me, fluttering just like a moth to land on fences post. Then it folded its wings and turned its moon face towards where I stood frozen on the spot, head shifting deliberately back and forth.

A relaxed owl will fluff up as being a ball; this blog remained sleek and watchful, legs tensed. Inside the moments before it lifted silently again on those broad wings to slip back into the night, I stilled my head and experimented with absorb this hunter’s uncanny presence.

A barn owl looks solid, but under all of those feathers its skeleton tells the genuine story. They are all head and talons, while using slenderest body somewhere between, and carry little fat in reserve. A barn owl isn’t not hunger. This place glowed palely at nighttime; it’s this spectral quality and also the owl’s demonic screech on the voice, like fingernails down a chalkboard, that sparked its supernatural reputation. Yet for my situation it’s their quietness which is most uncanny.

Not the greatest microphones can catch a trace of the wing beats, aside from a person’s ear. The barn owl’s ears, in contrast, are exquisitely evolved to find prey in low light and might easily tell the difference involving the rustle associated with a leaf or vole. Their ears are hidden in dense feathers aside of the eyes over the dish-like face and so are both slightly different bigger and offset, hence the owl can calibrate more precisely the position of the company’s next victim. Half a metre looking at the next meal, the toes come forward additionally, the talons spread. At this time of impact, the legs stretch plus the head goes back, the eyes close and that beautiful bird’s intimate soundscape is completed.