Owls

Loving this thread! Don’t get in a flap, OP. Practise ‘hearing’ their calls as music 🎶 lulling you to sleep. Or maybe meditate? If you’re not experienced in meditation you could just wing it …

Randy cats here.

I’d love an owl! 🦉

Owls are fabulous! There are some near where I live and I often hear them when I get up for my 3am pee, and occasionally later, just before dawn.

I especially love barn owls. A friend used to work in the gardens at a nearby National Trust property, and they had barn owls roosting in the mower shed. When they had babies, I went to see them and they were just the cutest little things.

Because they were used to people coming and going all day long, they weren't bothered by being close to humans and would look down at all the activity from their perch on the rafters.

Not the owls! Growing up, my bedroom faced trees that were absolutely festooned with the local bird population. I've always had trouble sleeping. Having owls hooting away at the antisocial hour of 11pm, and the woodpigeons raving at dawn, plus the resident woodpecker, made me an absolute delight on zombiefied schooldays! The annoying thing is that the woodpigeons followed me when I moved hundreds of miles away, so I still had to put up with the dawn-time raves.

We also had peacocks that regularly escaped in the village where I grew up. My friend was terrified on seeing this huge bird in a tree by my window one night. Being a townie, she thought that I was lying about what living in the countryside was like!

I now live even more rurally. Interestingly, the woodpigeons haven't found me here... yet... but the crows like to clog-dance on my roof, pheasants (and badgers) are regular roadkill and I saw a hawk happily demolishing a pigeon in next door's garden while I was eating lunch one day. That was a tad off-putting. The countryside is anything but quiet and peaceful!

They are magnificent. So silent in flight. And yes look like ghosts! They do screech though.
My chimney owl is a male Tawny who starts his Hooooooooos around midnight, or earlier if I am watching a horror/thriller film in bed.

We relined the chimney with a flexible metal pipe. B’stard owl sits on it and hoots and it now sounds 100x louder by the time it reaches our bedroom fireplace. Makes me jump everytime.

Not as bad as mating foxes in the fields though. They sound like someone is screaming for help. Horrible.

Then we have the other birds of prey who leave pigeon parts around the garden. They could as least eat the pheasants who make the worst sound of any bird.

Sat out in garden today. So loud with bloody bees rustling in the cherry tree.

I blame not enough pesticides round here.

I saw a fabulous massive barn owl the other day. I was driving over the Peak district in a remote area in the dark and it flapped up right in front of my car and nearly scared the absolute shit out of me, like a huge bloody ghost right in front of me. It swooped out of the way just in time, but thank goodness nobody was around especially behind me because I swerved and slammed on the brakes.

I agree that owls are twats

One successfully made me think I'd lost my mind. I was going through an intensely stressful period of time due to a close family member having very very severe health issues. It was horrifying and utterly exhausting. It involved travelling a lot of miles and very little sleep whilst the situation was ongoing.

Driving home from hospital at 1am, sat on a low wall at the side of the main road in an urban area, a giant owl looked me dead in the eye, swivelling its head as i went. Obviously I thought I'd finally lost the plot. I knew I'd hallucinated it. It was deeply distressing on top of everything else.

It wasn't until YEARS later, chatting to a good friend that I admitted my hallucination and how much it scared me that the mental stress had made me lose my grip and I'd imagined a huge frigging roadside owl.

He was a keen birder as a child, so he whipped out his phone and said did it look like this? And lo, it did indeed look like that, because it turns out the UK has some unfeasabily large owls. Larger than you'd think.

What the feathery big bastard was doing traffic watching at 1am is anyone's guess.

We are staying in Yorkshire at the moment and we have an eagle owl outside. Not native to this country but some escaped a while back and bred. I used the bird identifying app on my phone and could not believe it but the camp owners confirmed it. We also have a barn owl screeching its head off and a tawny owl. Must be in Owl land.

No one’s mentioned chain saw?

I have owls in the night, plus badgers, deer and foxes setting off my ring doorbell. In the day I have buzzards, green woodpeckers, kites, marsh harriers, curlews (and they are LOUD). Plus the usual birds, including some bloody annoying woodpigeons, starlings, tree and hedge sparrow, dunnovk, marsh tit, black tit, blue tit, and the odd hawk and a group of jackdaw who I adore. The cuckoos will soon arrive along with cranes. The swans are just leaving, over winter the sound of fields of swans is everywhere. They are Whooper swans from Siberia. The noise an acre or two of swans can make is fantastic. Then there's the tractors!

I love it. I lived for years with sirens, people, traffic, trains, cars. The difference here, out of a city and in a fen, is none of the noises are threatening. I can hear them, know them and rest. In fact I love drifting off to sleep or waking to them.

YABU but I love this thread!

You could learn Owlish then either tell it to bugger off in its native language or give it relationship advice about meeting Mr RightTwit?

We have owls and red kites around here. Almost in a town centre.
The kites are so "tame" and close overhead I can hear them when the windows are shut.

I’d love to hear an owl at night. I get police sirens and next door’s TV…

Many years ago we had 3 youngsters in the trees outside our bed room, they did not all sit in the same tree and all bloody night they called to each other and their parents. I did yell at them a few times but it did bugger all . Noisy fluffy buggers

Those mouse munching feathery fuckers are the reason I moved to a town. One night I remember my boyfriend waking me up to show me the marvel of nature hooting on my skylight and was most put out when I told him to tell it to piss off and went back to sleep. 6 months down the line he was throwing cushions of exasperation at the window.

You’re not unreasonable. Single owls and pigeons looking for love are absolute nobs.

that’s brilliant

Bet he was down the local getting a vole or two

We have 4 big ones near us and they very loud, long distance chats.

They are less annoying than foxes shagging.

I just love owls!!! 🦉

fav thread today ✨️ 💖 🤣

The Merlin app will tell you as it identifies the bird from its call