Owl’s Bean Sí call may go way of piseogs
Owls have excellent vision, so eating their eyes must improve a patient’s sight and the hooting of owls resembles a child’s coughing. You may hear the hoot of a long-eared owl near woodland but the ghostly shriek of the Bean Sí might be heard almost anywhere; it was a familiar sound in Limerick city when I was a child.
The shrieker was, of course, the barn owl which, thanks to the Late Late Show and advertisements for Odlum’s Flour, is a familiar bird to Irish people. Its nocturnal ways, pale plumage and human-like face, give the bird ghostly associations and it’s regarded as a portent of doom.
But people who encounter a barn owl need not worry; it’s the bird itself which needs to look out. John Lusby of BirdWatch Ireland, speaking on RTÉ’s Mooney Show recently, claimed the barn owl is in trouble. Numbers are declining, not only here but in Britain and mainland Europe.
Accurate enumeration is difficult; owls are secretive and easily overlooked. The Hawk Trust estimated that there were between 600 and 900 pairs in Ireland between 1982 and 1985, but numbers have fallen by at least 50% since then. About 150 nest sites were known in the late 1990s, but there are far fewer now.
The species is ‘red-listed’ in Ireland and classed as a ‘species of European conservation concern’ by the EU.
There are two types of owl. The ones with big yellow or orange eyes use their superb sight to locate prey.
We have two species from this group here; the long-eared owl is a resident, while its short-eared cousin is mainly a winter visitor. Both birds have brown plumage.
Barn owls, which have creamy white plumage and small black eyes, belong to a different family, with 16 species worldwide. They use hearing rather than sight to find their victims.
Our particular kind of barn owl is found in every continent except Antarctica, but not all barn owl species have a such a wide range.
The Itombwe owl, for example, is one of the world’s rarest birds. The first one was recorded in the Congo in 1951. None was seen again until 1966, when a bird was captured, photographed and released.
Nobody knows why barn owls are declining in Ireland, but John Lusby and Prof John O’Halloran of UCC have begun an in-depth study, in the hope of coming up with some answers. Research on owls here, up to now, has focused mainly on diet and little is known about bird’s ecology of in Irish conditions. This is hardly surprising; owls are exceedingly difficult to find, let alone study.
That the barn owl should be in such trouble is odd. Birds of prey, generally, have done well here in recent years. A few decades ago, there was great pessimism as to their future; the buzzard was almost extinct and the peregrine had been reduced to a few dozen pairs. The main threat then was from pesticides, the most notorious of which was DDT.
Small birds, eating seeds dressed with the chemicals, accumulated the poisons in their fats and a creature feeding on small birds might receive massive doses of toxins. The pesticides interfered with egg formation in peregrines; the shells became unusually thin and the eggs broke under the weight of the incubating bird.
A ban on the lethal chemicals, and more enlightened public attitudes to birds of prey, turned the situation around and populations started to recover. Now, buzzards and peregrines are doing well, golden eagles have been introduced to Donegal, after an absence of a hundred years, and the Wildlife Service proposes to bring back white-tailed eagles.
Barn owls eat mostly mice and rats, which also carried pesticide residues. The owls survived the poisoning onslaught, so it’s surprising that they should now go into decline. So what is harming them?
There are several possibilities. Barn owls like the fringes of woods and thick mature hedgerows. They frequent ruins and old-style farm buildings, where there are mice and rats to catch and holes in roofs through which the owls can enter and nest.
In recent years, hedges all over the country have been destroyed, in the interests of farming efficiency, and old buildings are being replaced with modern ones, with have no nooks and crannies in which owls might nest. Barn owls are often killed on the roads and the increased speeds and frequency of vehicles may be taking their toll.
Ironically, the newer, more virulent, rat poisons may also be implicated in the demise of a bird which is the farmer’s best friend. Owls were the traditional rodent exterminators. A Malaysian study found that a pair of breeding owls kills, on average, 1,300 rats in a year. Farm buildings in Holland have nest boxes incorporated in them and doors through which owls can enter. Food is provided for them in hard weather.
Your help is needed with the barn owl project; researchers want to discover where the birds are. If you see or hear a barn owl, please contact John Lusby at BirdWatch Ireland: jlusby@birdwatchireland.ie.
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