Birds to spot
• Tawnies might be the most common owl species in the UK, but you won’t spot them in Ireland and are unlikely to on our islands,• Like other owl species, they were once viewed as an ill omen, with their nocturnal hooting said to foretell a death in a household. Lady Macbeth hears a tell-tale cry as she waits for her husband to kill the king: “It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman.”• Assuming that the distinctive ‘twit-twoo’ is a tawny owl’s call is a common mistake. It is, in fact, the combination of a female call and a male answer, which together sounds like one bird.• With the Wise Owl featuring heavily in the Brownie story, leaders of Brownie packs have traditionally been called Brown Owl or Tawny Owl.• Eric Hosking, credited as one of the first professional bird photographers, lost his left eye to one in 1937 visiting a Welsh bird hide.• In Ted Hughes’ poem , which delves into his relationship with Sylvia Plath, a tawny owl attacks the speaker unexpectedly: .• While Harry Potter’s Hedwig is a Snowy Owl, tawnies appear several times in JK Rowling’s series, including at Privet Drive after Voldemort’s downfall, and they can be bought at Eeylops Owl Emporium for 10 Galleons.• In Beatrix Potter’s , the red squirrel makes a narrow escape from the bad-tempered tawny owl Old Brown.
