Fight To Survive

A push from her powerful legs and the barn owl was airborne.

Her long wings fully unfolded, and the air moved over her feathers, giving her lift and aerodynamic control. This bird, the F35 Lightning of the animal kingdom, was near-perfectly adapted for stealthy flight, for a surprise attack and to locate and kill the prey animals she sought.

Her flat, heart-shaped head turned from side to side. The shape of her face and eye sockets channelled noise into her ears, located just above and to the outer side of her eyes. Her hearing was so fine she could hear the tiny rustle of a small mammal moving in long grass and her eyesight so acute that she could spot the disturbance of a small animal moving even in near-zero light.

A beautifully adapted and very capable hunter, this barn owl was nevertheless malnourished and underweight. She needed to eat, and eat well if she was to survive and if she was to have any prospect of raising her chicks to fledge age.

Her last brood had failed, dying one after another. The prospects for this year’s brood were not much better.

This owl was not aware of the reasons her nightly hunt for food got tougher – she just didn’t return to nest as often with food. Her chicks were getting weaker by the hour.

To be near-silent in flight, barn owls need to not be too heavy or too large. One result of this is that they cannot put extra fat on in times of plenty to carry them through the lean times. Also, her feathers were incredibly soft. This is also a ‘stealth’ modification, but the downside is that her feathers were not very waterproof, and she is largely unable to hunt in wet weather.

This owl could not be aware of it, but climate change was making her habitat progressively rainier. There were more nights when she couldn’t hunt. The same climate changes were raising the average temperature and so reducing the number of small prey animals in the vicinity, meaning that even when she could hunt, her catch was smaller and distances to travel greater. Some fields had been developed for housing, so there was a loss of habitat and roosting/nesting spaces. No one change was catastrophic but in combination they were deadly. Starvation is already the biggest cause of death for barn owls (food is far from guaranteed) but these local changes were straining the population in this locale to breaking point.

The owl, of course, knew none of this. Even on a night with a clear sky and near full moon, her white belly feathers rendered her near-invisible from the ground, just casting a faint shadow as she whispered past overhead.

Her wings flared as she spotted the distinctive movements of a small animal in the long grass. She stopped her forward flight and rapidly changed direction, dropping with both long legs extended beneath her, another adaptation allowing her sharp talons to reach through the long grass and grasp the small mammal concealed there.

Success! This catch was for herself. She needed the energy to keep her strength up and to carry on hunting. She ate the rodent whole and would later regurgitate the undigestible teeth and fur. Two strong wing beats carried her back into the air, and the interrupted aerial ballet began again. The next catch would be carried back to the nest.

The owl has laid a clutch of four eggs, typical when this species usually lay 4 – 6. All had hatched but one had quickly died. In food shortage, all too common, barn owl parents will feed the largest chick with any available food and the smallest will frequently go without, with the inevitable result that is to be expected. She would hunt on tonight and maybe at least one of her young would get lucky.