Owl Read online

  Owl

  Animal

  Series editor: Jonathan Burt

  Crow

  Boria Sax Cat

  Katharine M. Rogers Spider

  Katja and Sergiusz Michalski

  Ant

  Charlotte Sleigh Peacock

  Christine E. Jackson Pig

  Brett Mizelle

  Tortoise

  Peter Young Cow

  Hannah Velten Lion

  Deirdre Jackson

  Cockroach

  Marion Copeland Swan

  Peter Young Camel

  Robert Irwin

  Dog

  Susan McHugh Shark

  Dean Crawford Chicken

  Annie Potts

  Oyster

  Rebecca Stott Rhinoceros

  Kelly Enright Wolf

  Gary Marvin

  Bear

  Robert E. Bieder Moose

  Kevin Jackson Butterfly

  Matthew Brower

  Bee

  Claire Preston Duck

  Victoria de Rijke Sheep

  Philip Armstrong

  Rat

  Jonathan Burt Horse

  Elaine Walker Octopus

  Helen Tiffin

  Snake

  Drake Stutesman Elephant

  Daniel Wylie Flea

  Karin Barton

  Falcon

  Helen Macdonald Eel

  Richard Schweid Giraffe

  Mark Williams

  Whale

  Joe Roman Ape

  John Sorenson Jellyfish

  Animal

  Parrot

  Paul Carter Snail

  Peter Williams Beetle

  Adam Dodd

  Tiger

  Susie Green Pigeon

  Barbara Allen Donkey

  Jill Bough

  Salmon

  Peter Coates Forthcoming Bat

  Judith Halberstam

  Fox

  Martin Wallen Penguin

  Stephen Martin

  Fly

  Steven Connor Hare

  Simon Carnell

  Owl

  Desmond Morris

  REAKTION BOOKS

  Published by

  REAKTION BOOKS LTD

  33 Great Sutton Street

  London EC1V 0DX, UK

  www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

  First published 2009

  Copyright © Desmond Morris 2009

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and

  Index match the printed edition of this book.

  Printed and bound in China

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Morris, Desmond.

  Owl. – (Animal)

  1. Owls.

  2. Owls in literature.

  3. Owls in art.

  I. Title II. Series

  598.9’7-DC22

  eISBN: 9781861897107

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 Prehistoric Owls

  2 Ancient Owls

  3 Medicinal Owls

  4 Symbolic Owls

  5 Emblematic Owls

  6 Literary Owls

  7 Tribal Owls

  8 Owls and Artists

  9 Typical Owls

  10 Unusual Owls

  Timeline

  Appendix: Classification of Owls

  References

  Bibliography

  Associations and Websites

  Photo Acknowledgements

  Index

  The White Owl, a portrait of the barn owl by Eleazar Albin in 1731. The iconic shape of the owl has been a joy for illustrators for centuries.

  Introduction

  The owl is a contradiction. It is the best known of birds and the least known of birds. Ask anyone, even a small child, to draw an owl and they will do so without hesitation. Ask them when they last saw an owl and they will pause, think hard and then say they can’t remember. As a picture in a book – yes; as a bird in a TV documentary – probably; as a cage inmate in a zoo – possibly. But when did they last see a live owl in the wild, in its natural state? That is a different matter.

  How has this contradiction arisen? It is easy enough to understand why we so rarely encounter a live owl, for it is a shy night predator with silent flight. Unless we went out of our way to spot one and made organized nocturnal forays with special equipment, we would have little chance of coming face to face with one. It is harder to understand why we are so familiar with its appearance, if we see so little of it. The answer lies in its unique head shape. Like human beings the owl has a wide, rounded head, with a flat face and a pair of large, wide-set, staring eyes. This gives it an unusually human quality that no other bird can match and in ancient times it was sometimes referred to as the human-headed bird. We call ourselves Homo sapiens, meaning ‘wise man’ and because the owl has a human-looking head we refer to it as a ‘wise old bird’. In reality an owl is not as wise as a crow or a parrot, but we think of it as wise simply because of its superficial resemblance to us.

  A child’s-eye view: Wise Owl, Sad Owl, Angry Owl by Matilda, age 10, ink and pencil on paper, 2008.

  It is this humanoid stare that makes us feel we know the owl. And it is the broad head and the big, forward-facing eyes that make it impossible for us to look at an owl and not feel that we are in the presence of a deep-thinking avian relative. This makes us, at the same time, rather sentimental about owls and rather scared of them. If they are so wise and yet they only come out at dead of night, perhaps they are up to no good? Like burglars they stalk their prey when their victims are at their most vulnerable. Like vampires they only draw blood when the sun has gone down. Perhaps, instead of wisdom, there might be something evil about the owl?

  When we examine the history of our relationship with owls we find that it has, indeed, frequently been a symbol of both wisdom and evil. Wise or wicked, wicked or wise, the image of the owl keeps altering. For several thousand years these two iconic values have kept swapping and changing. Another of the contradictory qualities of the much misunderstood owl.

  In this book I want to examine both these roles, and others too. For the evil owl can suddenly change into a protective owl if its imagined violence can be harnessed and turned against our enemies. In India it has also been seen as a vehicle for a goddess, swooping down from the sky, and in Europe, by some, as a symbol of obstinacy and by others as an emblem of calm in the face of extreme provocation. In the twenty-first century, when we are at last coming to appreciate the wild fauna of our planet and worry about its dramatic decline, we are also keen to understand the fascinating biology of the owl.

  A Bestiary Owl, 12th century.

  So there are many owls to be examined here: the wise owl, the evil owl, the protective owl, the transporting owl, the obstinate owl, the calm owl and the natural owl. And there have been many different epochs and cultures in which our interest in owls has led to a fascinating collection of myths, legends and artefacts, all dominated by the owls’ hypnotic stare.

  On a personal note, from my days as a zoo curator I have known many captive owls, and during the days when I was travelling around making television programmes about animal life, I met many more. But if I am honest, I have – like you, I suspect – met very few owls in the wild, in their natural habitats. There was, however, one memorable encounter that I still recall vividly in every detail, even though it took place over sixty years ago, when I was at boarding school. I had wandered off into the countryside near the school one summer’s afternoon, and saw something strange in the corner of a field. I approa
ched slowly and silently because I could see that it was some kind of bird, standing immobile on the ground. As I drew closer, it still did not move. Then, when I was about ten feet away from it, I realized with a sudden jolt of recognition that it was a blood-covered, severely injured owl. It must have been shot, caught up in a trap, entangled in some sort of sharp wiring, or hit by a car in the night. Its injuries were horrific and it was clearly dying slowly and in great pain. It was beyond veterinary help. What was I to do?

  As there was no hope of saving it, my choice of action was deeply unpleasant. The easy option was to leave it alone, but this would mean that I was condemning it to die in agony. On the other hand, if I killed it, I would be putting it out of its misery, but this would require me to perform a violent act against a helpless victim and to destroy a magnificent bird. As a small schoolboy I found it hard to choose. I looked at the owl and the owl looked at me, its large black eyes registering no emotion. It must have been there for hours, waiting to die, and as we stared at one another I felt a huge emotional attachment to it and a burning anger towards the humans who, directly or indirectly, had caused its wounds.

  The year was 1942 and World War II was raging across Europe. Somehow, this blood-splattered owl standing in the corner of a sunlit Wiltshire field seemed to symbolize all the countless humans who would, inevitably, be wounded on that day across a whole continent. How I hated the human species at that moment. I decided I could not take the easy option. I found a large stone, struck the owl on the head with it and killed it. I had ended its suffering but I felt terrible. And to this day I still feel terrible about that moment whenever I think of it. Irrationally, I don’t think I would have been so upset if the bird had been a wounded pheasant. And therein lies the power of the owl. We know it is not human, but its human-shaped head sends out signals to our brain that make us identify more closely with it that with pointy-faced birds. As babies we humans respond strongly to a pair of maternal eyes staring down at us. We are genetically programmed to respond in this way and cannot help ourselves. So the owl triggers off a special reaction in us whenever we look at it and this gives us a sense of closeness to it, even though, in truth, it is a complete stranger.

  Perhaps the reason why I have decided to write this book is to try and make amends for the damage that had been done to that wounded owl. I want to atone by doing something for owls in general, explaining how fascinating they are biologically, and how rich and varied is their symbolism and their mythology. On the pages that follow I will do my best for them . . .

  1 Prehistoric Owls

  We know from fossil remains that owls have existed as a distinct lineage for at least 60 million years. This makes them one of the oldest known groups of birds and gives them plenty of time to have refined their highly specialized way of life as nocturnal predators.

  It is only during the very last part of their long reign that they will have encountered that irritatingly intrusive species, the human being. Happily for them, this encounter will have been far less damaging than for many other kinds of birds. They have rarely been put into tiny cages like so many songbirds or hunted for the table like countless game birds. But like all wild birds they have suffered the indignity of seeing their habitats destroyed over vast areas of land, their woodlands and forests decimated and their prey poisoned by pest-controllers. Despite these depredations they still thrive all over the world and, apart from the polar wastes, there are very few land regions where they are absent.

  The very first evidence of man’s knowledge of the existence of owls can be dated at about 30,000 years ago. The discovery of this evidence is very recent. On 18 December 1994 three cave-explorers found a hidden entrance in an underground cavern in south-east France. Dragging away the rubble that blocked this entrance they unearthed a narrow passageway. Squeezing through it they found themselves in a vast cave, its walls covered with beautiful prehistoric paintings. There were all the usual animals we know so well from cave art: bison, deer, horses, rhinos, mammoths and other large mammals, but what was so surprising about this newly discovered cave was that, deep inside, they also came across the incised image of an owl.

  This is the oldest representation of an owl known to us at the present time. It depicts a bird with a large, broad, rounded head from which protrude two upright ear-tufts. The eyes are present but rather smudged and there is a strong beak. Below the head the wings are clearly shown with about a dozen vertical lines suggesting plumage. The height of the figure is about 33 cm (13 inches) and its details appear as white lines incised into the yellow ochre colour of the cave wall. The incisions may have been made by a heavy fingernail, but much more likely by a simple stick or tool of some kind.

  By a lucky chance the antiquity of this image has been proved by its position in the cave. In the centre of the chamber in which it exists, called the Hillaire Chamber, there is a large crater – a great hole in the ground that subsided in antiquity. The owl image was incised on an overhang above this hole at a spot that is now impossible for a human hand to reach. The hole is 4.5 m (15 feet) deep and the crater has a diameter of 6 m (20 feet). The collapse of the cave floor has conveniently left the owl high and dry, proving beyond any doubt that it is not a modern fake.

  This first owl image has been enthusiastically identified as representing a great horned owl. There is no way of confirming this, except to point out that it does have horns and it does appear alongside images of Ice Age mammals such as mammoths, suggesting that it would have to be a very large bird to survive the cold. So, calling it a great horned owl is perhaps not too fanciful a suggestion. A second claim is, however, rather more doubtful. This argues that the prehistoric artists were such good observers that they had noticed that the owl can rotate its head through a wide angle and that the image is meant to show the bird from the rear, with its head twisted to survey whatever was immediately behind it. The reason for this claim is that the wings are supposed to be depicted from the back. This may be so, but it is far more likely that, as with any child drawing an owl, the wings are shown like this, even when viewing the bird from the front, as a simple way of emphasizing that this is a feathered creature.

  A great horned owl: 30,000-yearold engraved white lines on the roof of a cave at Chauvet, France.

  A family of snowy owls: Aurignacianperiod art incised in white lines on the roof of Les Trois-Frères Cave in the French Pyrenees.

  Regardless of these minor quibbles, this unique bird in what is now known as the Chauvet Cave, after its discoverer, provides us with a magnificent beginning to the long love affair that has existed between the human artist and the iconic shape of the owl.1

  To find the next owl images we have to move to the southwest of France, to the foothills of the Pyrenees and to a painted cave called the Trois-Frères. This cave is named for three brothers, the sons of Comte Bégouën, who discovered it in 1910. Here, among wall paintings dating from thousands of years later than those in the Chauvet cave, we find not one but three owls. They appear to form a family group with two adults, one on either side of an owl chick. They have been identified as a family of snowy owls, presumably because they co-exist on the walls of this cave with images of a variety of Ice Age animals. If this identification is correct, it means that this species occurred much farther south than it does today, which is not surprising when one considers the dramatic change in climate.2

  About thirty miles to the east of Trois-Frères, also in the foothills of the Pyrenees, is the little known painted cave of Le Portel. In Gallery One, not far from the entrance, is the image of a bird that has been identified as an owl, in simple black outline, near to that of a horse and a bison.3As in the Chauvet Cave, it is a solitary image among numerous horses, deer, bulls and bison. There is also a supposed owl image on the wall of the cave of La Viña in northern Spain and there are three Old Stone Age examples of owl figures in the round, two from Dolní Věstonice in the Czech Republic, fashioned from clay and bone ash, and one from Mas D’Azil in the French Pyrene
es, carved from an animal tooth.4 And that is about the sum total of Palaeolithic owl images.

  Palaeolithic owl images redrawn (left to right): a painted owl silhouette from Le Portel Cave, France; two owl figurines from Dolní Vestonice in the Czech Republic; an owl carved from an animal tooth, from Mas D’Azil in the French Pyrenees.

  The most frustrating feature of this small handful of early artefacts is that we have no way of telling how they were viewed by the prehistoric artists who made them. Their very rarity makes the problem even more diffcult to solve. There are, by comparison, literally hundreds of bison, deer, horses and other large prey species on the cave walls of France. It is obvious enough why the early artists were so fascinated by those animals. They provided the meat that enabled the small human tribes to survive in the freezing climate of the day. But why owls? Were they an occasional addition to the primeval diet, or did they possess some symbolic role, the nature of which we will never know? If we are to understand owl symbolism, we have to move on to much later depictions of these birds, from eras when we do have some idea about local beliefs and superstitions.

  2 Ancient Owls

  The ancient civilizations of the Middle East and Southern Europe provide us with some memorable owls.

  BABYLON

  About four thousand years ago in Babylonia (now in southern Iraq) an artist fashioned a strange clay relief plaque in the centre of which stands a fearsome naked goddess of human form, but with the wings and feet of an owl. To indicate her power she is depicted treading on two scrawny lions. She is flanked by a pair of large owls, standing stiffly erect and facing forward, giving the impression that they are her guardian companions or familiars.

  This unique work of art, once believed to be a fake but now proved to be genuine, shows us a goddess whose name is unknown, but who has been variously identified as Babylonian Ishtar, Babylonian Lileth, Caananite Anat, Sumerian Inanna, or perhaps Ereshkigal, Inanna’s sister and Queen of the Underworld. Because of this scholarly confusion, its new owners, the British Museum, refer to her simply as the Queen of the Night. Whoever she is, she appears to be the first of the many forms of the Owl Goddess. At this stage she seems to be a thoroughly aggressive, predatory creature, whose massive talons could subdue almost any enemy, but in later incarnations, such as the Greek Athene, her bellicose nature, although still present, is restrained by the acquisition of wisdom.