Understanding OWLS [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION As I start to write this bool< it is early January and Britain is in the grip of arctic weather - it is well below freezing for most, if not all of the day as well as at night. This alone makes it quite difficult to keep all our diurnal and nocturnal birds of prey well and comfortable. To add to that we have this morning had notice through the post from MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) to say that there has been a Newcastle's disease outbreak in the UK, and that we are in the 'surveillance area'. A phone call from Neil Forbes, our vet, and a discussion as to how this might affect us, has meant that we have now, twelve hours after the letter arriving, received the vaccine that was brought down by courier from Stoke-on-Trent, and inoculated over half the collection, with the other half to do tomorrow. Neil Forbes was with us for today so that we could do the birds that are more difficult and might be more inclined to suffer from stress. Injecting tiny Pearl Spotted Owlets weighing about 2oz (50g) is not fun, but as far as the owls were concerned it all went well. We lost a breeding female Merlin to stress, but that was the price I paid for protecting all the birds - it was a calculated risk and I had to accept the consequences, hard though it was. Right now I am really supposed to be writing -namely this book on Owls! - not spending hours inoculating; but as those of you who have livestock will know - and what those of you who are considering having owls should know - what you plan to do in life, and what your livestock actually needs you to do, are completely different! Owls have become increasingly popular recently: as pets: as birds that specialists want to breed, or that people want to fly for pleasure: or to train and fly for demonstrations at zoos and bird of prey centres: and even as birds to use for hunting, although I have to say I think they are far from ideal for that last objective or aim. As an owl sits looking at you, its round face. large head, forward-facing eyes and alert look might persuade you that it is wise, as is so often stated. Sadly that is probably not the case, and having trained a fair number of owls now, I have to say that if there was anything going on in their heads I would be surprised. That aside, they are these days probably one of the most popular group of birds there are. This was not always the case, however, and during Victorian times owls, like other birds of prey, were mercilessly persecuted for supposedly taking game birds. Game keepers these days are much more aware of conservation issues, and so the shooting of owls is far less prevalent today But in times gone by, owls, as a general rule, were poor news, the symbols of death and destruction, of illness, of ill luck and heaven knows what else, and thought of as sad, moody, grim, curst, ghostly and lots more besides, particulariy by poets and writers. On looking through old poems and books, these writers did not do a lot in the owl's favour - in fact it is amazing that attitudes have changed so much and that the owl now comes so high in the popularity polls. Anyway, enough of all this: I have to say that I am not particularly interested in the history of things, preferring to look forwards rather than back. Presumably you have bought this book because you want to learn more about owls, either to keep them, breed them, or to train and fly one. You will find that it will help you to do that if you understand a little about where owls fit into the scheme of things in the wild, what problems they are having at this time, and their habits and habitats - it will make it easier to understand the owl. And in furthering your education it should assure your owl of the best possible situation in captivity. For those of you who are dubious about keeping birds in captivity, remember this: most of the owls that you see in aviaries have probably never been in the wild, and so are unlikely to have feelings