If there are no nightingales, one must settle for owls. Danish proverb
For a long time owls were grouped with falcons, but they now have their own order, Strigiformes, from strix, the Greek for “owl”, and the ultimate root of “strident”. The name denotes the owl’s sound, as does our word “owl” – which comes from the Latin ululatio, a cry of lamentation, and is cognate with our word “howl”. The owl’s cry and nocturnal habits have connected it with omens of death and ill-fortune in almost every culture.
Shakespeare first used the phrase “tu-whit, tu-who” in his poem “Winter” in Love’s Labour’s Lost. It’s most likely to be a pair of tawny owls, the male calling out “tu-who” and the female answering with a harsher “kee-wick”.
A new species of owl used to be discovered approximately every 10 years but there have been a spate of new discoveries recently. Ten new species were found in the Philippines in 2012 after specialist recording equipment was used which could distinguish between the owl’s calls. A new owl was found in Oman in 2013: it has a distinctive hoot which scientists claim sounds like the tune of “Here Comes the Bride”. There are currently around 225 different species, including the barking owl, the spectacled owl, the grass owl and the fish owl. Sadly, the laughing owl of New Zealand is now extinct. The collective noun for a group of owls is a “parliament”.
The elf owl and the least pygmy owl share the title of “smallest owl” and are the size of sparrows. The biggest owl – Blakiston’s fish owl – is 100 times bigger, has a 6ft wingspan and can weigh over 4.5kg. Small owls tend to eat insects but bigger birds eat hares, other owls and even small deer. The largest owl to have lived was the ground-dwelling giant Cuban owl. Over three feet tall, with massive claws, it resembled a killer turkey and died out over 10,000 years ago.
Owls are deceptive. Their bodies and legs are covered with an enormous number of downy feathers, and even their flight feathers have unzipped, fringed ends to soften the flow of air over them. This makes them look a lot larger than they really are. The long-eared owl has a three-foot wingspan but weighs less than an orange. To hide, it sucks in its feathers and manages a reasonable impression of a branch.
A tawny owl’s eyeballs are almost as large as a human’s, even though its skull (without feathers) is barely the size of a golf ball. The eyeball is shaped like a saltshaker rather than a sphere, to allow space for the largest possible retina. The retina has many more light-sensitive rods than detail-focusing cones, enabling them to see when the light level falls to almost nothing. A long-eared owl’s eyes are so sensitive it can locate a stationary mouse in light levels equivalent to a football stadium illuminated by a single candle. The downside is that they can’t move their eyes. If they want to change their range of view, owls have to swivel their head. If they want to judge an object’s position accurately, they bob their head around, reading it from slightly different angles.
Barn owl chicks have worked out a system whereby the hungriest chicks eat first. This means they don’t waste energy competing for food that they are unlikely to win but still ensure they get fed when they need to. This was discovered after scientists noticed the chicks carried on making noises even when their parents weren’t around. Three-quarters of barn owls now live in man-made nesting boxes.
Florence Nightingale rescued an owlet from the Parthenon after it fell from its nest. She named the bird Athena and kept her as a pet. Athena was fed by hand, taught how to curtsy and lived in Florence’s pocket. It is legal to keep owls as pets in Britain but this must be done responsibly. A trustee from the World Owl Trust commented that Harry Potter’s owl Hedwig was kept in a parrot cage but in real life a snowy owl would need an outdoor enclosure bigger than a caravan.
Last year, former Arsenal footballer Lee Dixon had to issue a tweet denying he had anything to do with a widely-circulated picture on the internet which featured a zoo sign for a southern boobook owl, “adopted by Lee Dixon”, which gloried in the name “Hooty McOwlface”.
*1,339 QI Facts To Make Your Jaw Drop by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson & James Harkin (Faber & Faber, RRP £9.99) is available from Telegraph Books (0844 871 1515) at £8.99 plus £1.10 p&p.
Next week QI pulls off an orchidaceous heist