Before I go to bed each night, I pause for a few minutes to listen for the call of the boobook owl.
It doesn’t happen often but if I am lucky I hear the onomatopoeic “boo-book” call carrying far and wide from the wet forest above my home in Dynnyrne.
It’s special – especially if I stand on my drive and listen to the owls on star-lit summer nights – because I have always been intrigued by these curious birds.
My knowledge of owls is lacking, however. As night hunters they are difficult to study for both amateur bird-watchers and scientists and so our understanding of them is limited.
The gaps in our knowledge have now been plugged by science writer Jennifer Ackerman who, in her new book What an Owl Knows, sets out the latest in owl research together with her own observations.
For centuries, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than 300,000 years ago in the Chauvet cave paintings in southern France and our enduring fascination with their forward gaze and silent flight has cemented the owl as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge, foresight and intuition. But what really does an owl know? Though our infatuation goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to study these birds in great detail.
Ackerman gives us an insight into the rich biological history of owls and reveals the remarkable scientific discoveries involving their behaviour and the workings of their brains.
Some 260 species of owls exist today on all continents except Antarctica and, surprisingly, the number is growing. One new species – the long-whiskered owlet – was recently discovered in the Andean mountains of northern Peru and it is so different scientists have put it in an owl group of its own.
Closer to home, the book contains interesting observations about our own boobook owls. Engineers creating computer simulations of the airflow around the silent wings of owls have further explained how their feathers are modulated to reduce the sounds of flapping.
In another reference to boobook owls, researchers have found boobook chicks are particularly aggressive when receiving food. They behave, in fact, like spoiled, demanding children and harassed parents often resort to feeding owlets to the point of “groggy satiation”, the chicks eating until they fall asleep.
Ackerman explains that, like humans babies, baby owls spend more time than adults in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the type of sleep associated with vivid dreams. In 2022 scientists found REM sleep in mice involved a kind of cognitive processing that might help to shape behaviour when mice are awake, such as honing skills to avoid owls. In owls, it could be the reverse. The sleep might enforce skills learned when awake – namely how to hunt mice!
What An Owl Knows, by Jennifer Ackerman, is published by Scribe, RRP $35.