A Message from the Night
It’s March 2022, and though the days are hot, there is a subtle coolness in the evening air. I find myself sitting at the darkened window, though it is never truly dark in Brisbane. I’m astounded that outside, in a suburb six kilometers west of the city centre, a Powerful Owl is calling. They are Australia’s biggest owl and classified as vulnerable in Queensland.
I feel blessed. Their distinctive ‘woo-hoo’ call repeats and I wish that I could see it sitting, swaying in the spiky foliage of the Hoop Pines. They have golden eyes and a direct, piercing stare. Their grey/brown and buff feathers camouflage them amongst the dappled foliage. I’ve read that the Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua) breed from April to September, so why has it been calling for months? December through to March, the distant and then close ‘woo-hooing’ fills me with delight, and a strange melancholy. It resonates in me. Is anyone out there? Can anyone hear me? Anyone?
Powerful Owls do share their lives – couples may stay together for 30 years. They hatch their chicks in trees weathered and hollowed by nature. The creation of a suitable nest may take 150 years. But in the quest for land and resources, we humans ignore the beauty and need of old, dead trees and knock them down. The threat to the eggs and chicks by bulldozers, chainsaws, and cars is increasing. Many birds are killed as they take flight on their first forays into the wider world. Maybe that’s why I feel a loneliness build in me when I hear their call. It may be a mourning partner, or parent, wishing that time could be reversed. Wishing that their lost were safe in the trees and the darkness, not lying mangled and misplaced on the tarmac. The owls have a way of dominating this place with their beauty, their size, and their call.
Maybe they are calling to their young, guiding them home. Do juvenile owls feel a sense of freedom or terror when they leave the nest for the first time? As a child I felt a sense of doom when I left my parents. I was always worried that death would take one or both of them from me forever. Into my teenage years, this foreboding steered itself away from my family and out into the world. My fear turned to anger when I learned how we humans were destroying the natural environment. I thought all of humankind was condemned. I felt indignant that wondrous animals and plants were not respected and revered in their own right, but classified as food and energy for us insatiable humans.
I longed to escape the tedium of what seemed like a boring and stifling town. I wished to take flight on my own foray into the wild and unknown. I left home, I travelled, I fell in and out of love, and back in again. Life and its burdens clipped my wings and I settled. Now amongst the leafy trees of Taringa I sit in my own nest. Eucalypt and possum scented breezes huff through the windows, and I watch for wildlife and listen to the bustle in the branches. Recently rain-soaked, the mulch and foliage is equal parts fresh and rotten. The days bring currawong carols and wing beats. The nights bring the eerie haunt of owl-song. I try for contentment in my bower.
The insistence of the owls at times wakes me from an uneasy sleep. I listen to the lonely echo and wonder will there be a reply. Will there be a day when I hear the return call, or will the song fade eventually to silence? A silence caused by the extinction of Australia’s largest owl. The thought of lives being extinguished leads me backwards in time to that child, scared of death. My parents, as all of us, are aging. They will leave me one day to fly on, unguided. Their passions for bird-watching, reading and the natural world bind us in endless discussions of life, wonder and death. They introduced me to a novel by Margaret Craven, and at the age of fourteen I read her story, I heard the owl call my name. I was entranced by the way faraway lands seemed so immense, so different to my own and so mysterious. The realm of the First Nations People, the Kwakiutl tribe, featured in the book. They live in British Columbia where silver water and magic is navigated by canoe and family law. They believe that owls are messengers representing wisdom, prophecy, and intuition.
‘Death is coming for you,’ call the owls.
When a person hears their name, they will soon enter the spirit world, and leave this one behind.
The story talks also of teenagers losing their way to the modern world of technology and alcohol. These were relevant issues for me to ponder, as my friends and siblings were experimenting with drinking, and the world was changing to accommodate less forests and more people. I remember being interested by the owl-as-prophet image, and a little worried that I would hear my name called one lonesome night.
The lone insistent ‘woo-hoo’ repeats in my ears, and I feel worried for the world and the future. I can’t help but think that the call is for all humankind. The owls are no longer calling to their kin, or mourning their lost. They are naming us all. They are signalling to the spirit world that there will be many leaving this once glorious, now doomed place. A place that should be left to the songs, and the trees and the owls in the night.