Owls

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The aim of this series is to interest the general

reader in the wildlife of Britain by recapturing the enquiring spirit of the old naturalists. The editors believe that the natural pride of the British public in the native flora and fauna, to which must be added concern for their conservation, is best fostered by maintaining a high standard of accuracy combined with clarity of exposition in presenting the results of modern scientific research.

Cover

Title Page

About the Editors

Editors’ Preface

Author’s Foreword and Acknowledgements

1 Introducing Owls

2 Foods and Feeding

3 Breeding Ecology

4 Movements

5 Mortality

6 Owls and Humans

7 Guide to British Owls

References

Index

The New Naturalist Library

Copyright

About the Publisher

AT THE TIME OF THE FOUNDATION of the New Naturalist Series in 1943, the then Editorial Board drew up a list of possible titles, about 30 in all. Of those 30, only Owls has escaped publication until now, 71 years overdue. Over the years, several potential authors were approached, including the late Eric Hosking, doyen of bird photographers, who was Photographic Editor on that first Board and for many subsequent New Naturalists. Eric himself was long associated with owls, and indeed famously lost an eye to a particularly bad-tempered, camera-shy Tawny Owl, but sadly his intended co-author died unexpectedly and this proposal joined other non-deliveries. But all is well – Mike Toms has produced a brilliant volume to fulfill this long-felt need.

For a relatively small family of birds, owls command more than their share of attention. We are all familiar with them from earliest childhood, for example in Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’: Lear himself was also an expert ornithological artist. Perhaps surprisingly, we admire and enjoy owls, unlike the myriad small birds that fly into a mobbing frenzy when they discover a roosting owl. On the face of it, owls could well be quite frightening, especially to youngsters. Large boldly-staring, rarely-blinking eyes never leave you, and they can rotate their heads without strangling themselves to follow your movement should you walk behind them. They do have the predators’ hooked beak but not as prominent in profile as a hawk and they have sharply competent and muscular talons, as any bird ringer will testify.

Historically, and all over the world, owls have been held to be creatures of magic, associates of witches (no potion would be effective without a portion of owl in its contents, as in Shakespeare’s Macbeth). This mystic association continues for today’s youngsters in the elegant Snowy Owl Hedwig that features in the Harry Potter saga. The ghostly appearance and shrieking call of the Barn Owl, which has an almost worldwide distribution, may account for much of this association, but perhaps the Tawny is the owl at the centre of beliefs that owls are creatures of wisdom – the ‘wise old owl’ – typified by ‘Wol’ in A. A. Milne’s Pooh stories and ‘Old Brown’ in Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin. Elsewhere, the scientific name of the Little Owl Athene noctua (introduced to England from southern Europe) is derived from Pallas Athene, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Anatomically, how an owl’s skull can contain its huge eyes and ears, whose highly acute functions Mike Toms details so fascinatingly as vital to their life style, can also find space for the necessary brain-power for all this wisdom remains an unsolved mystery.

Mike Toms is in the fortunate position of being an enthusiastic naturalist and also an ornithological professional, working for the British Trust for Ornithology at its headquarters at Thetford in Breckland. The BTO is world-famous for its blend of a professional scientific staff with the teamwork of thousands of expert volunteer birdwatchers who together investigate changes in bird populations, ecology, distribution and migration, both to derive scientific knowledge and to the general benefit of bird conservation. Mike notes in his introduction the role that a Barn Owl played in firing his enthusiasm when as a young paperboy on a bike he was entranced by his first sighting, which led to a life-long enthusiasm for owls culminating in this excellent volume.

Through his fluent and fascinating text, Mike Toms explores the astonishing range of differences within this small family, some of them nocturnal, some crepuscular, some diurnal, in their food and feeding, breeding biology, and migrations. For example, the Tawny Owl strangely seems to have been included in St Patrick’s ban on snakes, and has not colonized Ireland! The volume concludes with a chapter giving detailed accounts of each of our owl species, with mention of the various Continental and Transatlantic vagrants that have reached our shores. At long last we welcome the New Naturalist Owls by Mike Toms as it secures its rightful and valued place in our series.