Choosing my favourite recordings from the book is surprisingly tough. In the end I settled on four, which are all my own. This is not because I consider my recordings superior to anyone else’s, but simply because having been there, they mean much more to me. All of these sound much better on good headphones, because of the binaurual microphone set-up we used to record them.
In late March 2006, I received a very fortuitous email from Per Alström in Sweden:
Hi Magnus, In case you need recordings of singing Hawk, Ural, Tengmalm’s and Pygmy Owls, I suggest you hop on a plane and come here asap. A Hawk Owl has been calling only an h drive N of here for a while (has been there all winter), and Tengmalm’s and Ural can be heard at the same place; lots of Urals and Pygmys nearby. Cheers Per
This was too good to miss, so a few days later I did indeed hop on a plane. Although the Northern Hawk-Owl didn’t call for me, all the others did, and in fantastic numbers. I think we heard about 10 Ural Owls in a single night from a 30 km stretch of road. I kid you not. On one of the three nights the conditions were perfect, at least if you can call minus 12°C ‘perfect’, and when there is no wind or traffic in one of these frozen Swedish pine forests, the resonance can be breathtaking. That is exactly why the Ural Owl I have chosen is one of my all-time favourite recordings.
Ural Owl – Strix uralensis Vällen, Uppland, Sweden, 23:00, 1 April 2006. Compound hooting of a male. 06.004.MR.14030.01
When René and I visited Fuerteventura in early 2010, we found a Long-eared Owl roost in the middle of a Raven roost. The owls would be flying out for the night just as the Ravens were settling in. Fortunately, I managed to choose exactly the right tree to place my microphones. I love the soft smoothness of the Long-eared Owl, hooting stoically despite all the devilish cackles whirling around it. In general, a recording of a monotonous bird call sounds much better with lots of ‘context’ around it, and this seems to me to be a great example.
Canarian Long-eared Owl – Asio otus canariensis Betancuria, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, 18:54, 29 January 2010. Male hooting in the middle of an African Northern Raven Corvus corax tingitanus roost. 100129.MR.185427.01
I nearly left this recording out of the book, because if the truth be told, there’s not a lot of Common Barn Owl Tyto alba in it. However, it’s actually very representative of this particular call-type. The gaps are very long in perennial screeching, and what’s also typical is that the distance and direction varies from one screech to the next, because the owl is flying while making this sound.
The real reason to choose this recording as one of my favourites is of course the pack of Arabian Wolves in the background. They came as a complete surprise. At the time I was under the illusion that jackals would be more likely, and it was only when I got home that the penny really dropped. I don’t think I would ever make that mistake again. The scratchy sounds at close range are footsteps of a scrawny cow on gravel, curious about me and apparently oblivious to the wolves. There are two other owl species endemic to Arabia in the background.
Common Barn Owl – Tyto alba Wadi Darbat, Dhofar, Oman, 21:30, 18 April 2010. Perennial screeches in flight. The barn owls of Arabia belong to subspecies erlangeri. Background: Arabian Wolf Canis lupus arabs, Arabian Scops Owl Otus pamelae and Arabian Eagle-Owl Bubo milesi. 100418.MR.213018.12
Many of us have a landscape from some special place deeply imprinted in us, as a result of early experiences there. In my case it’s not so much my birthplace, Edinburgh, but my mother’s, the Orkney Islands. That’s where I first took an interest in birds, listened to the curly-shaped currli calls of curlews, and saw my first owls. In Orkney, Short-eared Owls Asio flammeus are a common sight, but I don’t remember hearing them during my childhood summer holidays at all.
Years later, after the team experienced endless frustration trying to record them in Holland and elsewhere I tried my luck in Orkney. One pair that I followed was at war with a Peregrine Falco peregrinus. I was never sure whether the owls’ nest just happened to be on the falcon’s flight path to his best feeding areas, or he was actually harassing the owls deliberately. Either way, they hated his guts. In this recording you can hear the female owl taking off from her nest to attack the Peregrine which swoops in from the left at great speed. She greets him with coarse barks and billsnaps. The falcon calls a few times in response, then continues on into the distance.
Short-eared Owl – Asio flammeus Finstown, Orkney, Scotland, 13:05, 13 June 2010. Female attacks a Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus. Her tiny nestlings peep faintly in the background (beware of confusion with alarm calls of closer Meadow Pipit Anthus pratensis). Background: Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata and Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis. 100613.MR.130503.11