Barn owl

The unexpected appearance of a barn owl in broad daylight on a snowy November day, as I was writing about… barn owls.

The view from my study window was of early snow, marking out the shapes and boundaries of fields as clearly as if it were a 1:1 scale map. On a summer evening, there would always be a small chance of a barn owl flying across the view: never in November in the middle of the day, until yesterday.

It had presumably had a poor couple of nights’ hunting and had been driven by hunger to keep trying. For me, its run of bad luck was my good fortune – I looked out of the window just at the moment it rose from another unsuccesful strike and appeared above a dry stone wall to catch my eye. I stopped what I was doing, grabbed my camera and went outside.

What I was doing was …. writing about barn owls. It’s not the main subject of my current project (about which, more some time), but as I compile a year’s – five notebooks’ – worth of local fieldwork, the barn owl drifts in and out of the narrative, as only barn owls can. Here are a few lightly-edited extracts* from those field notes, which may or may not make it into the final published work:

• …like a candle flame, buoyed over the corner field by the various strokes and configurations of its broad, stiff wings, reshaping itself every second, hover – glide – lift – turn – turn – hover – vanish. Shift of form and aura. (26 February)
• …as Emmanuel’s bells rang ten o’clock, as the moon rose over the seven-acre wood and a barn owl climbed into a hover over the fields. Moon-owl and owl-moon, the two of them sharing light. (2 June)
• Into this twilight a barn owl brought its peculiar white silence: moth and flickering flame in one, hovering as if drawn to itself. (22 June)
• To the east, a cloud flickered from within like a fluorescent bulb, lit by its own silent lightning, heralding the soundless arrival of a noctilucent barn owl. (9 September)

*Note to self: this is a useful exercise in checking for repetition…