Owls and the in-between!
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Overhead forest photo by Spencer Watson via Unsplash.
Book spine photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash.
Music: "Wonderland" by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Bibliography:
Bachmann, Thomas and Hermann Wagner. "The three-dimensional shape of serrations at barn owl wings: towards a typical natural serration as a role model for biomimetic applications." Journal of Anatomy, Volume 219, Issue 2. Institute for Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics, April 20, 2011.
Clouston, William Alexander and Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby. Birds of Omen in Shetland. United Kingdom: Private print, 1893.
Eggenberger, Sophia. "Owl of Athena on the Union Building." University of Texas at Austin. July 30, 2019. Accessed July 26, 2021. https://sites.utexas.edu/classicalmythutcampus/2019/07/30/owl-of-athena-on-the-union-building/
Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences. Edited by Cora Linn Daniel and Prof. C.M. Stevans. University Press of the Pacific: 1903.
Hay, Anne. "Owls in the Native American Culture." Buffalo Bill Center of the West. August 6, 2018. Accessed July 26, 2021.
https://centerofthewest.org/2018/08/06/owls-native-american-culture/
Jackson, Hazel. "Curious Kids: how do birds see where they're going?" The Conversation. August 31, 2018. Accessed July 26, 2021.
https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-birds-see-where-theyre-going-101932
Lienhard, John H. "No. 2581, Binocular Vision." Engines of Our Ingenuity. University of Houston, 2010. Accessed July 26, 2021. https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2581.htm
Sikes, Wirt. British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions. United Kingdom: Sampson Low, 1880.
"In the hollow tree, in the old gray tower,
The spectral owl doth dwell;
Dull, hated, despised, in the sunshine hour,
But at dusk he's abroad and well!
Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him;
All mock him outright by day;
But at night, when the wood grow still and dim,
The boldest will shrink away!
O, when the night falls, and roasts the fowl,
Then, then, is the reign of the horned owl!"
Good evening, friends, and thanks for listening.
One of the most interesting things about superstitions and traditions is that they can vary from community to community, and from family to family. And in my family, seeing an owl has always meant good luck.
My parents have a beautiful rural property, and while owls are probably around fairly often, it’s rare to catch sight of one silently passing overhead or watching from a tree branch. But when I do see one, every time I am awed and a little spooked.
As evidenced by our introductory poem snippet, from 18th century English poet Bryan Proctor, owls have an interesting reputation in folklore and superstition. Tonight, we’ll be learning a little about them and their relationship to the mysterious in-betweens.
Thanks again for joining me, and enjoy.
Species of owls are found on all continents except Antarctica, with the barn owl (Tyto alba) and the short-eared owl (Asio flammeus) the most widely distributed. Owls are able to adapt to nearly every environment, with great variations in size, diet, and habitat present between species. Because they are nocturnal, owls have had an easier time surviving in areas populated by humans compared to their raptor relatives, like hawks and eagles.
Owls are nocturnal raptors, with most species eating small rodents, though some of the tinier types will eat insects instead. Though there are many different varieties of owls, they do share common characteristics when it comes to appearance - flat faces and large eyes, and small hooked beaks.
Many birds have their eyes on the sides of their heads, giving them binocular vision and the ability to see about 300 degrees. For perspective, humans also have binocular vision and we can see a field of only about 180 degrees.
Owls, on the other hand, have forward-facing eyes and many have a smaller field of vision than even we do - about 120 to 150 degrees. This may seem like a hindrance, but owls adapted this narrow field of sight so that they can see with incredible clarity even over long distances. This is because both of an owl’s eyes can focus on the same object at the same time. Their impossibly accurate vision and ability to turn their heads 270 degrees make them formidable hunters.
Contributing also to their hunting prowess are the owl’s wings. On the ends of their wings, owls have special feathers that end in a very fine flexible fringe. This fringe allows air to pass silently over the owl as it flies, reducing aerodynamic noise, and allowing it to effectively sneak up on prey.
If you’re looking to find an owl hangout near you, try looking for owl pellets. When an owl catches a small animal - like a mouse or little bird, for instance - anything that the owl can’t digest is thrown up in a compact little nugget called an owl pellet. These contain fur, bones, and feathers because an owl’s prey is usually swallowed whole.
Owls appear in art dating back as far as 10,000 years ago. As you're probably aware if you have a child - or, were a child - owls in popular culture are often associated with intelligence and scholarly owls are frequently present in children's entertainment and advertising. Interestingly, owls have had this reputation for a long, long time.
The Greeks believed that owls were the favorite bird of the Goddess Athena, who was the deity associated with reason, wisdom, war, and the civilized world. One of Athena's epithets was Glaukopis, derived from glaux, which translates to little owl. Glaukopis is also sometimes translated to “blue-eyed”, which was one of the clues - along with archeological evidence - that Greek statues were often painted.
Traces of blue have been found on the eyes of some Athena statuary. Some very old depictions of women with heads resembling those of owls have been found, but debate remains among historians whether these figures were intended to be owl-women . . . or just regular carvings of women that deteriorated badly over time, losing some of their facial features.
Little owls (Carine noctua) are a species of owl common in Greece and it was believed that one of these owls often sat on Athena's shoulder, revealing the truth and knowledge of the future to her. Greek soldiers considered a sighting of a little owl before battle a sign of the Goddess’ presence and blessing.
As Athena’s attendants, owls developed a strong reputation for possessing vast wisdom and knowledge. And this association has stuck around until today. Unfortunately for owls, around the medieval period, public perception of their character and motivations dipped - and they had a rough couple centuries.
Encountering an owl in the wild is a pretty awesome experience. When you catch them watching you with their giant eyes, it's easy to imagine how they've been able to make such an impression on their human neighbors over time. While the Greeks associated their all-knowing and otherworldly gaze with wisdom, folks in the medieval period got a little spooked instead.
Owls are well known for their haunting vocalizations - which can vary from somber who-who's to frightening screeches. Their secretive ways, silent flight, and striking appearance all combined to give them a mysterious and ghostlike quality. Further cementing their medieval reputation as something otherworldly was their nocturnal behavior - more specifically, their tendency to be most active at dusk and just before dawn. This connected the owl to liminality - an idea which has made humans uneasy for millennia.
Liminality is an anthropological term derived from the Latin word limen, meaning "threshold". The term refers to periods of transition, and was first coined by French ethnographer Arnold van Gannep in his 1909 work Les Rites de Passage, or The Rites of Passage. In this publication van Gannep examined traditional rites of passage - like those observed in the grieving process following a loss, the transition from childhood to adulthood, and other ritualized observances of these big life changes.
Anthropologists have sought to flesh out the concept of liminality since Gannep’s studies, and it has come to represent not only the observances of transitional periods, but the feelings of uncertainty and unease that arise during those periods. And it turns out that humans have a tendency to feel this disquiet during even everyday transitions - even in places that are changing or unsettled.
In fact, if you’ve heard the term “liminal” before, it was probably in the context of “liminal spaces”. Liminal spaces are thresholds - in-between places - that are disorienting and feel off. And boy oh boy, when it comes to liminality in all its forms, this last year or so has provided us with an overflowing list of examples.
In the midst of the COVID pandemic, I was hired on at an upscale restaurant in incredibly busy downtown Sacramento. That is, it used to be busy. While it’s gradually returning to normal, I’ve been at my restaurant just under a year, and when I first started it was during the height of lockdowns and exponentially increasing infection rates.
Even aside from Coronavirus I was reevaluating priorities, changing careers, moving back to the city after a couple years away. I remember walking to my very first shift through streets that were holding their breath. A place I’d lived for a decade was suddenly different - it was quiet, it was waiting, it was weird. The restaurant was doing primarily take-out and the tables were closed. Storefronts were empty. Plazas were still meticulously manicured despite not a soul being visible anywhere.
That is liminality. The discomfort that comes from change, the unease, the wondering what’s to come. Our ancestors didn’t refer to this phenomenon as liminality but it was recognized. Transitions between phases of life, between seasons, between night and day and day and night, marshlands, foothills, crossroads - these are all examples of what folklore would recognize as times and places where things are shifting and unsettled.
Uncertainty has always made humans uncomfortable - we like to know what’s happening around us, why, and what to expect. So transitions became associated with the spiritual world in many folk traditions. Paranormal activity and events are still tied to liminal time and spaces - consider The Twilight Zone series. The strangeness of liminality was projected onto the creatures that inhabited these spaces - the owl being a prime example - and will forever have an association with other.
Drastically different from its prestigious days as Athena’s wise attendant, the reputation of the owl had become pretty grim by the medieval period. British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions published in 1880 tells us that Wales' mythological "corpse-bird", or the Aderyn y Corph, was a wingless and featherless creature occupying the 'land of illusion' between our earth and the sky - a liminal space. It is said to summon death, like a grim reaper of sorts. As British Goblins’ author, Wirt Sikes, informs us, "This corpse-bird may properly be associated with the superstition regarding the screech-owl, whose cry near a sick-bed inevitably portends death."
Variations of this superstition pop up everywhere, and owls were nearly synonymous with ill omens. Even our old friend, The Encyclopedia of Superstitions - published in 1903 - doesn't have many nice things to say about owls.
"In Germany," we are informed, "exists the belief that to hear an owl hoot for several nights at the same spot in the woods, was a certain sign that someone had been murdered there and buried under the tree where the owl sat. 'The shrieking witch-owl that doth ever cry, but boding death and griefs herself inters, In darksome graves and hollow sepulchers."
Some folks in Western European traditions didn’t consider white owls birds at all, believing them to instead be spirits of the human dead in animal form. And interestingly, this is not an isolated tradition. The Cheyenne, an indiginous people in North America, consider only one species of owl - the short-eared owl - to be a bird. Other owls are corporeal representations of spirits.
Owls feathers would be attached to shields and clothing for protection, and had great ceremonial significance. Other idiginous peoples, including the Lakota, Omaha, Fox, Ojibwa, and Menominee, consider owls to be embodied spirits or facilitators of communication between the living and spiritual plains. Owls are sometimes considered the guardians of the transition between life and death, acting as psychopomps - or spiritual guides to the afterlife. Due to their close relationship with the spiritual realm, an encounter with an owl could be a sign of great transitions or impending death.
Remarkably, on opposite sides of the world, the owl developed very similar associations independently, prior to any communication between these cultures. Though it is safe to say that the reputations of European owls suffered, their connections to the spiritual world resulting in villainization rather than respect like their indiginous North American counterparts.
The following wonderful description was published in the 1893 volume Birds of Omen in Shetland. The author recounts their first exposure to a Snowy Owl, colloquially referred to as a Katyogle.
"I never got over my early impressions regarding the creature, and these were of a most ghostly nature, being associated with winter, darkness, the death of a neighbour, and whispers of the Katyogle being "sent" as "a warning" . . . When I saw its living self . . . that confirmed my childish belief in it [sic] supernatural character.
A large, lordly bird, of snowy plumage, with solemn face, bespeaking a mind rapt in contemplation of nature's mysteries . . . [he] did not move his burly person when the curious observer went round to inspect him. He merely turned his head and followed with that unwinking stare of mingled feelings."
I hope you enjoyed our venture into the strange world of the owl, and learned something new about owls, anthropology, or maybe even both.
As always, I am so grateful you are listening. You can find past episodes and additional content on my website at www.ursaminorcreations.com, and my email and bibliographical reference are in the show notes. Episodes are also available on the Scholar Minor YouTube channel for your listening and sharing convenience.
Have a great week, everyone, and I look forward to learning with you again soon.