Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Boobook Owl
Boobook owls are so named because that is precisely the noise they make: a noise that transliterates into a satisfyingly aboriginal word. Australian night-noises are like those of no other country: the melted-honey carolling of a lone insomniac magpie, the cacophonous scampering of possums across the tin roof, and the solitary mopokes of the boobook as she glares with unseen yellow eyes into the starlit dark.
It is never quite pleasant to hold an owl: not because of the speechlessly agonising moment when you let down your guard and are clutched by those talons, or torn by that beak, but because it feels inherently uncomfortable to hold such wildness in gauntleted hands. To have an owl perching on your hand is a different matter, provided there are no jesses and the bird is in its prime, but when the feathers are ruffled by your handling, you feel you are assaulting the dignity of something far prouder than yourself. And a handled owl is silent, sulking, waiting for its chance. The pupil hardens in those yellow eyes, and the owl regards you with the utmost contempt, and so you avoid the glare, and do what you can with the fractured leg, or the impossible dislocation that has robbed the bird of flight.
Holding a bird to release it: that is quite a different matter. There is the same indignity, the same disdain, and then as the gauntlets open, there is a moment of disbelief before the bird is gone, flying shakily at first, circling you, landing at last on the high branch of a gum tree. Still the feathers stick out at ugly angles, and the hard gaze has not melted. You stand there in the middle of the field, your neck aching from looking up, staring her out. She blinks, loses interest, begins to preen.
Photograph by Leslie Watson, c. 1983.
Boobook Owl
Boobook owls are so named because that is precisely the noise they make: a noise that transliterates into a satisfyingly aboriginal word. Australian night-noises are like those of no other country: the melted-honey carolling of a lone insomniac magpie, the cacophonous scampering of possums across the tin roof, and the solitary mopokes of the boobook as she glares with unseen yellow eyes into the starlit dark.
It is never quite pleasant to hold an owl: not because of the speechlessly agonising moment when you let down your guard and are clutched by those talons, or torn by that beak, but because it feels inherently uncomfortable to hold such wildness in gauntleted hands. To have an owl perching on your hand is a different matter, provided there are no jesses and the bird is in its prime, but when the feathers are ruffled by your handling, you feel you are assaulting the dignity of something far prouder than yourself. And a handled owl is silent, sulking, waiting for its chance. The pupil hardens in those yellow eyes, and the owl regards you with the utmost contempt, and so you avoid the glare, and do what you can with the fractured leg, or the impossible dislocation that has robbed the bird of flight.
Holding a bird to release it: that is quite a different matter. There is the same indignity, the same disdain, and then as the gauntlets open, there is a moment of disbelief before the bird is gone, flying shakily at first, circling you, landing at last on the high branch of a gum tree. Still the feathers stick out at ugly angles, and the hard gaze has not melted. You stand there in the middle of the field, your neck aching from looking up, staring her out. She blinks, loses interest, begins to preen.
Photograph by Leslie Watson, c. 1983.