Owl Sense Page 15
I went in search of a travel guide, but go into any branch of Waterstones and you will fail to find the word ‘Serbia’ in any travel or nature section. The past resonances of ethnic clashes meant that it simply was not a popular tourist destination. The out-of-date tourist and travel advice I found online had not helped me, in fact quite the opposite – it fomented fears, mentioning ‘landmines’, and police who may become aggressive and not appreciate cameras. One travel website mentioned the importance of avoiding large gatherings, and we were warned to not get mixed up in any demonstrations. Could groups of birders bristling with cameras, scopes and binoculars be taken for a demonstration?
But by now, the trip was booked, and I felt reassured by the precedent of many other successful trips reported by David, not to mention my pressing need to see Long-eared Owls. The Air Serbia plane journey got off to a good start and my conversational British neighbour quizzed me about the binoculars and then looked bored when I excitedly laid out my plans. His smiling wife on the other hand turned out to be Serbian, interested, and full of questions. Where would I be starting my search? Did I know of the area of lakes in northern Serbia where many migrating cranes gather? I should be sure to taste the delicious speciality riblja čorba, a rich paprika-red fish soup. And there was much wildlife to be seen such as wildcats and Syrian woodpeckers. The husband endured our conversation, which was interrupted by a boisterous group of blokes conversing across the plane about hunting ducks and their different types of rifle. I hoped that they would not be heading to the same places as David had planned. My companion fell asleep and I eavesdropped on this hunting group. Serbia, I surreptitiously learned, is a very popular hunting destination. When the large containers marked ‘firearms’ came through baggage reclaim, thanks to my eavesdropping I felt less alarmed than I might have done otherwise.
My next discovery was that Belgrade airport put Heathrow’s Terminal Four to shame. It was full of more very friendly Serbs, was spotlessly clean, and had the most affordable sandwiches and refreshments I had seen in twenty years. David was visible from a distance hefting a large tripod and telescope. I picked up my bag and met with a motley group of enthusiasts, six of us in all: Wing Lok and Lee, who had come all the way from Hong Kong, Janet, and Nigel and Margaret, these last two bristling with anticipation and lenses of impressive girth. We were met by Milan who greeted David affectionately and then took Janet and me by the arm to show us where we could exchange our sterling for Serbian dinar. (‘No, not that much, you won’t need so much here, things are very cheap!’ he advised, noticing my £100 sterling.) Quite how cheap everything was repeatedly took me by surprise over the next few days of our adventure. Food cost next to nothing, drinks and clothing even less, and I procured a warm, fashionable, beautifully hand-knitted hat with owl ears and tassels in a craft shop for about 95 pence.
Our driver whisked us away in a comfortable minibus, through the dark to the hotel, Kaštel Ečka, an English-style stately home surrounded by tall pine trees and parkland. Inside its mid-nineteenth-century walls the rooms were plush and warm and, we were informed, had hosted guests such as the Austro-Hungarian Prince Franz Ferdinand, composer and violinist Franz Liszt, and Serbian prince Aleksandar Karađorđević. Seated in a majestic ballroom, we were served a huge three-course meal, along with copious amounts of wine and choice beers. Serbia in 2015 could not have been more welcoming.
The next morning, well rested from our first night in the spacious bedrooms, we found our way out of our giant beds, and fed on four-egg omelettes, steaming coffee and heaps of savoury ham-and-cheese pastries. Then we were introduced to the rules of Owl Trip. There were only two rules: David’s dictum, ‘Always look up’ and Milan’s rule, ‘Don’t scare the owls.’ Having agreed to these, we boarded the owl-mobile and set off.
In Britain, Long-eared Owls often inhabit rural places: heathland, forest and so on. Miles from the nearest street lamp, unseen by human eyes, they hunt on windswept moors and roost in quiet patches of pine forest; they drift over swampy fens and quarter rough grassland, or they might even stop in abandoned military bases with empty-eyed windows that stare out over scruffy scrublands now rich and teeming with voles. Few people ever witness them, and even fewer still know what they require to survive; the Long-eared Owl is a very private kind of owl, and remains largely an enigma. Next to the charismatic beauty of the Barn Owl, and the noisy domesticity of the Tawny, the Long-eared Owl fades into obscurity and remains generally unknown and unsought. In Serbia, however, it is a different story.
Milan explained as we drove that in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Hungary and other Eastern European countries, owls, and a whole host of other wildlife, flourish in the remaining agriculturally undeveloped places. Diversity of species, from invertebrates to large carnivores, vastly surpasses our Northern European count. From grasshoppers to woodpeckers, shrikes, hares and wildcats, these countries have stunningly rich fauna and flora. Brown bear. Lynx. Beaver. Wolf. Ural and Pygmy Owls, and a million more orthoptera (that’s grasshopper and cricket species) than we could ever dream of. As we gazed out of the windows, Milan told us that all this wildness might be flourishing now but the future was increasingly overshadowed by the threat of ever-intensifying agriculture.
We were driving through the flattest landscape I had ever seen. This was the Pannonian Plain. This vast low-lying area was once an inland sea: the Pannonian Sea. When the seas receded the remaining water created a natural, treeless but salty wetland laced with saline lakes and marshes full of reeds and rich with wildlife. But now the area had been largely drained so that increasingly intensive farming could exploit the grasslands, and gradually mechanisation was encroaching.
Wintry mist hung in flat, muddy fields of sugar beet, and watery light caught on bare orchards and skeletal vines. The sky was low and grey, the horizon broken only by power stations and lines of pylons stretching away endlessly across bare fields. The first question I had was why were there no trees in the Serbian countryside? ‘All of the trees have been cut down for firewood,’ Milan told us bluntly. ‘After the war and the sanctions people were very poor.’ They must have needed fuel. I looked at the road rolling out ahead, all these roads that used to be lined with trees, and I felt an ache for the lost shady avenues twining away into the distance. Now not one remained. But all around the towns and in amongst the houses and villages people had planted fast-growing conifer trees. These were for decoration, shelter and fuel – and they were silver pine and spruce, the very kinds of trees favoured by Long-eared Owls. In the absence of other trees, they were prime roosting sites.
The owls came in from Eastern Europe and from Scandinavia, encouraged by the presence of other owls, thinking that this must be a safe place, protected from predators, and a good feeding ground. Year on year, they increased in numbers. The owls learned from one another that this was a good place to shelter. The many old-fashioned smallholding farms traditionally used grain and corn stores in open stacks which small mammals could easily enter; the rodents freely fattened themselves up and thus provided perfect foraging for owls. The sparse patches of conifers, the open grassland and the protective scrub that surrounded the houses and homesteads all created reliable habitat and food supply for the swelling number of owls. Now it is thought that up to 30,000 owls live in Serbia. In some villages, Milan told us, there are more owls than people. But Serbia, with its temperatures that plummet 30 degrees below freezing in winter, surely would not make a good stopover for wintering birds? Wasn’t it too cold? It might in fact be climate choas that is bringing them here, unexpected surges of milder weather allowing them to linger in this place. In years gone by this landlocked country would have been covered in snow and ice during the winter months, but now, for the last few years, it has been the same temperature as Britain and France. With a combination of recently warmer winters and a profusion of conifers and shelter in the towns, the owls fly in from rural parts of the surrounding countryside and could remain here all winter, gather
ing together for warmth and safety. Perhaps in years gone by they would have flown elsewhere but now it was convenient and protected, and they had made it their winter home.
All my preconceptions about this owl were changing. This did not look like the kind of wild landscape I had previously considered owls to favour. The austere grey horizon was broken by the occasional vertical of a gigantic chimney belching steam, and sparse clumps of spindly silver birch reflected weak winter light, their slender trunks brighter than the grim sky. Of course, owls were not concerned with aesthetics. This gaunt place suited them just fine. I wondered what it would be like in the snow when white ground would meet white sky and there would be little to distinguish land and cloud in the excoriating conditions of deep winter. The solid-frozen rivers, frost-cracked roads, freeze-dried plains and snow-laden twigs of this desolate place would still provide shelter for hordes of down-insulated, feather-footed iron-taloned predators. My friends Mark, Tim and Matt would be visiting in January, in the full blast of cold, and later Mark spoke of its stark, crystalline beauty: the days were encrusted with sparkling white rime-frost that made the most ordinary things – the grass, the paths, the road, the twigs on the trees – completely magical and harshly beautiful.
In the winter months, as the number of small mammals in the fields diminishes and prey becomes harder to find, Milan continued, the owls come into town to roost. Here it is sheltered, warmer than the surrounding countryside, and there are plenty of rats to eat. The lime trees, white poplar, and above all the plentiful conifers, are stuffed with roosting collared doves, blue tits and many other small birds upon which the owls can easily prey. Even better, there are no buzzards or goshawks in town, and these are the predators feared by the owls; they are normally found in woodland, so it is much safer here than their normal habitat. The owls may only stay a few months, until the food runs out; in five months, Serbia.com reports, these owls may eat over half a million rodents. In the spring, they will disperse. Some might move north again to breed, perhaps returning to the Baltic states and Finland where other bird protection societies and groups like Milan’s will capture and ring them, and slowly we will gain more information on the movements of this mysterious owl.
It seems that poverty and ‘behind the times’ farming might be beneficial for the wildlife here. People simply cannot afford to invest in big machinery so the traditional, wildlife-friendly methods of patchwork habitat remain: coniferous shelter belts, plenty of rough grass, free food for mice and copious crevices for other rodents. Owl heaven. Additionally, unlike in Britain, where rodenticide is used routinely to destroy pests (and by sad coincidence, the owls who eat them), poisons are not used. I wondered, if the situation was the same in some areas of Britain where this kind of progress has intensified production, how many more owls we might have. We, sadly, define our owl species by their rarity, or often their absence. Here in Serbia, in these low-lying villages with their small houses painted green, pink or sunflower, each with their hen runs, pine copses and their sleepy, free-range dogs, there did seem to be more owls than people.
We stopped in one village and parked beside a school. The children were beginning to come out and walk home for their lunch. They wore pink, scarlet and green puffer jackets and carried neat satchels on their backs. They glanced and grinned at us as Milan pointed up to flocks of sparrows and blue tits. ‘Willow warblers are common here,’ he told us, then pointed out a shrike, and, ‘Look! A pair of Syrian woodpeckers! All these are common in towns here. In spring, the dawn chorus is powerful. Try to imagine it,’ he suggested. ‘In the morning, all you can hear is the birds.’ Then, among some juniper trees inside a churchyard, Milan stopped and gestured for us to be quiet.
I see the ear tufts first, and as my eyes make sense of a narrow, bark-coloured owl, I see it peer down at us with bright orange eyes. At last! This is what we have come for, and it is the eyes which astound me. We are so close, standing beneath the trees and looking up. The owl is peaceful, and then, amazingly, I notice another, roosting against a branch, fluffed up and relaxed in sleep. I focus my binoculars on the first one to get a better view of its patterning. The breast-streaked pattern is for disguise when the birds are roosting, and the soft beige front is flecked with little chocolate vertical splashes, crossed like tiny pine-twig crucifixes. Its back is finely speckled and the colour of ashes, and in a neat vertical of pale splashes, the upper-wing coverts are dotted with white ‘braces’, an adornment I have also seen on Tawnies. The feet are almost invisible, covered over by pale frills of breast down so soft it looks as if it has been brushed.
The owl’s white facial disc and pale, vertical ‘eyebows’, its erect ear tufts and narrow, sleek, upright stance, give it a startling appearance, that looks almost affronted. But this is a face that also seems to have every confidence that it is pretty much invisible. And so the owl does not move; it narrows its bright irises to two glowing slivers and sits twig-like, in contrast to its dozing neighbour, which appears completely relaxed, its face drooping, eyes closed, feathers puffed and round as a ball. It looks as fat as butter, although this is an illusion; beneath that plumage it is no doubt as lean and svelte as its alert friend. Perhaps the more nervous owl is a newcomer; like many of them it might have flown here from a great distance, and might be more wary than its devil-may-care puffball friend. Gently curled around the rough skin of the branch I can just make out its two black talons. If we could see its legs, we would see that they are covered in creamy-coloured insulating down, specially evolved for the night-time cold. This owl may occupy a position somewhere between cute and ridiculous but its death-by-stealth weaponry reveals a predator that is designed to execute without hesitation.
How many do you think are in this tree? Milan asks provocatively. Six? Nine? We try to count, squinting and staring. Eventually we give up.
Twenty-seven, Milan declares. No! Twenty-eight … Twenty-nine! In one tree! From our small group come several sharp intakes of breath. Disbelief, astonishment at just how invisible, how immobile these birds are in their roosts. The trees are not huge, but the junipers, with their evergreen blankets of aromatic needles and their copious, drooping boughs, create pockets of darkness and conceal their precious cargo beautifully. The trees rock ever so gently, cradling their silent dwellers.
Two, five, nine owls in each and every corner of the tree, some with a branch to themselves, others patiently sharing. ‘However many you think,’ Milan adds educationally, ‘double it!’
We gaze branchward. The owls gaze back. Some doze, some turn their faces away at our intrusion, but others embody a rainbow of expression: curious, alarmed, threatened or irritated, the owls’ facial ornamentation could be modified, giving each and every individual, according to its reaction, a different expression. The plumage varies too, depending on sex and age. Some ears are down, others erect: they can be folded at will and almost flattened, a little like those of a defensive cat; although this owl cannot snarl or hiss, but merely manifests a detached kind of stare. Inside the facial disc the colour is a soft rust, and on the females this is also reflected in the breast feathers which can be a richer, warmer colour than the males’ pale beige. Every owl is different.
Children mill about us as we point and count as if possessed. For the locals, the owls have always been there, and are not often of interest. People used to take pot shots at them if they were bored, and laugh at the way in response to a gunshot a tree would suddenly blossom into a cloud of whirling owls. All that has stopped now, since Milan and his colleagues began their research and generated a campaign of owl PR. ‘Because it used to be a socialist country, everybody still believes what they hear on the TV,’ Milan tells us. ‘It’s easy to get people to listen and to change what they do, because they are used to trusting the media and doing what they are told. So nobody harms the owls any more; they are even starting to be proud of them.’ People understand that the owls are protected, although some of them still cannot quite see why. There are just so many, it wou
ld be like visitors flocking to Devon to see the pied wagtails or the flocks of teal.
‘In this village, that tree was the Mothership,’ Milan explains. All around it, other, smaller, satellite trees had their own little bouquets perched nervously amongst the branches: ‘Those were the new owls. They are unsure, and although there is no pecking order – owls do not have a social structure as such – they come in and perch here before they feel confident enough to join others.’
To understand any owl species, I have learned that you need to understand its habitat. Long-eared Owls are quite specialised in that they need dense arboreal cover and also rough, open grassland. This makes the Long-eared Owl a frontier species. It occupies the edges of these two very different habitats: conifers to hide from predators, and open hunting grounds full of small mammals. In Britain this combination of habitats may be quite limited, and could explain part of the reason why our Long-eared Owl numbers appear to be so low.
The woodland serves the owl because it contains old crows’ nests and although the Long-eared Owl can and does nest on the ground, they prefer to occupy pre-built homes. Often, Milan informs us, these platforms are not the most reliable. Corvids don’t go in for aesthetics or design, and many of the Serbian Long-eared Owls’ breeding attempts fail due to crumbling nests. So Milan and his friends at the Bird Protection and Study Society have set up a nest-box programme, providing warm, dry and strong boxes so the owls can raise their young safely. This has increased breeding productivity by 1.5 chicks per brood, on average, Milan says proudly.
I am in the presence of someone who has studied these creatures for years, who knows more about the behaviour and ecology of these owls and also the other species in Serbia, than perhaps anyone I will ever meet. If corvid nests in conifers are the only nests available, these will be selected, but if there are no conifers, and there are available nests in hawthorn or willow, they will be taken instead, Milan says. The denser the better, as during breeding concealment from predators is paramount. This owl has evolved alongside many predators: goshawk, Ural owl and buzzard; as well as mammals such as lynx, pine martens and wildcat. I am in awe of the knowledge Milan has about the whole, interlinked ecology of which the owl is only a part. How many years has he been doing this? ‘For ever!’ Milan laughs. ‘Since I was a small boy!’ This is the study and work of a whole lifetime. I see it as science with passion, the kind of devotion that works with vulnerable species in a changing world. It is long-term, worth fighting for, and risks heartbreak. But isn’t heartbreak often worth it, in the end?