Sooo having just finished a very pleasant bat transect survey in a very quiet bit of Yorkshire countryside I moseyed on back to my car with the occasional small yawn escaping me. Bat transects involve walking a set route slowly for two hours noting any bat activity as well as identifying the different species by using detectors. Quite tiring but good fun and something a bit different from the many building emergence surveys that seem to outnumber the transects!
Anyway, I digress. My route home after the survey took me mostly along my usual daily commute, roads I know well and roads I've often travelled very late at night on the way home from bat surveys. Heading across a moorland with my full beams on and I pick out the unmistakeable shape of an owl flapping up off the road but at 60mph in the car I couldn't avoid it and there was a sickening thud. First critter I've ever knocked down...well I did once clip a swallow with my shoulder while on the motorbike but it flew off seemingly ok so I don't count that. Anyway! Back to my actual road casualty...
I had no choice but to stop, that little voice on my shoulder shouting at me to turn around just in case, you never know, please don't let it be all smished... I do an about turn and pull up on the road verge. I scrabble around for my torch and head back onto the road. Very late so next to no traffic and a mile long straight so no danger! I find the owl and straight away realised it was a long-eared owl, the first I've seen in the wild up close and the most beautiful little thing. Seen them in falconries but not even in the hand while bird ringing training so I was all the more worried. It was limp but breathing. I picked it up rather gingerly and moved it back to my car and placed in the grass, praying it would come round from the shock. I rang up Chris, my other half, and told him I may be bringing an owl home and that I was going to be home even later than usual. While I was talking, I was watching this owl the whole time and amazingly, as it responding to the sound of my voice on the phone, I could see it was starting to come round. It's head did a bit of a stuttery thing, almost like it was trying to choke up a pellet then it's big lashed eyelids opened and it's head slowly moved round to face me. If you've not heard or seen photos of long-eared owls, you might not know they have the most amazingly bright orange eyes...much like this chap, taken at SMJ Falconry last year...
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| Managed to capture a mid-blink... |
Having given it a bit of an inspection on picking it up initially, there seemed to be no blood, no broken wings...and even half conscious those furry talons were still perfectly able to clench the grass in response to my touch...the owl was just in shock, amazing having taken a bump under my car! It didn't make any attempt to fly anywhere after 10 minutes of just watching me and swiveling it's head right round, like owls do, so I thought I'd best look lively before it got too chilled and find a box in my car. I found a towel too and then spied my camera on the car seat so grabbed that too and made my way back to where the owl lay in the grass....Took a couple of shots without flash, trying my best not to startle it but completely forgetting about the shutter noise DSLRs make...hence the eyes widening even further on taking the pics! Very blurred due to no flash but you can just make out the orange eyes...
So I picked up the towel and made a move to pick it up. That woke it up with a jolt and it flapped once or twice into the long grass. It was a bit of a struggle but I did see those wings outstretch and they looked pretty good...I went to pick it up again and this time the owl clearly thought bugger this, I'm off! And that was it, it flew straight off the grass and across a wall and into the pitch black! Out of my hands now I thought, good luck little fella/felless. I was pretty stunned if I'm honest, certainly hadn't expected it to fly off of its own accord but couldn't have been happier. I'd no idea why it was flapping in the road in the first place but I was resigned to the fact it must have been injured and that I needed to take it to a sanctuary somewhere...A friend who is knowledgeable about these owly matters suggested it may have been preying on frogs or toads in the road and that was the reason behind it's flapping in the road...I'd prefer that to the thought of its just having been clipped by another car and back for round 2 when I came along...!
One of nature's little miracles though and hopefully a happy ending :)
What was weird was the next night, having needed to come back the same way at the same time I saw an owl flapping at the side of the road, at wall height...having never seen an owl on that road at all then two in two days? Was it the same one? I'd like to think so. One can hope!
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