The poor bare forked dead willow has a new branch today. I looked up and its deeply familiar outline was changed. There is a new growth sprouting from the brusque yard-long horizontal. If I hadn’t known the damn tree so well – it gets around 100 gazes a day as I look up between sentences – I’d have accepted the pretence for what it seemed: a dumpy lumpy stumpy bit of tree.
No bird on earth can pretend to be a branch quite as well as a potoo, a South American nightjar relative. But here at noon in May a little owl was doing a pretty decent job: motionless, bark-coloured, with only those cross yellow eyes to give it away.
I’ve never seen him there before. My guess is that the cold weather and the north wind have caused a drastic shortage in food supplies for the nest he has 50 yards away. So he’s trying a different hunting-perch, or more likely, a different time to exploit it. A tactic of desperation, perhaps. He hasn’t moved a muscle in 20 minutes. If I were Mowgli I’d give him the jungle’s great greeting: Good hunting!
But after half-an-hour a crow chased him off. Not fooled. And because he can. Alas poor owlets!
One really feels for the owlets! You conjure up the scene so brilliantly. It is very good too, to read your articles in the Sunday Times. Thank you.
Thank you for your kind words, I saw the owl today. Still looks very busy.
I’m confused and puzzled Simon! I’ve checked my iSpiny “Chirp!” app on the iPad, thinking you might have meant a Little Owl, but his eyes don’t appear to be yellow, and I don’t think you meant an owlet, as Andy thinks, because you mention a nest, which implies it’s an adult!
I suspect it was a Scops, Pygmy, long or short-eared, or a Tengmalms!!?? Goodness gracious..there ARE a lot of owl varieties, aren’t there?? :-0
OOps, sorry…just reread your post and see you call it an owlet at the end!! Too much red wine peut-etre??
It was a little owl, and they do have yellow eyes, I promise!
I have rejoiced in your full page in The Times magazine as much as I mourned the loss of your column which lurked under the Giles Coren laugh out loud piece. Short of time, that was the page I went to first and never missed.Your successors are very worthy and knowledgeable and I do read them but your very tangible passion for the natural world and the way you communicate that remains a very great pleasure. Thank you.
Simon, you are back from your African adventures and produce another excellent piece, where you in Thetford Forest this morning walking a long coated Golden Labrador?
No it wasn’t! I am dog-less.
Really pleased to see you’re back.