Living with Bubo

You know that queasy feel­ing that you are being watched? Of course you do.

But I’m not talk­ing about deep state or on­line data cap­ture. This is about the un­nerv­ing sense that non ca­sual, un­com­fort­ably close, pierc­ing eyes are upon you.

Gulp.

It is nor­mal to be scared of the dark. The human species tends to seek com­fort in con­gre­ga­tion and il­lu­mi­na­tion, de­spite a dark­en­ing dis­po­si­tion to be so­cially frac­tious. Being sep­a­rated from the pack may well not be a happy place, dou­bly so if you are in un­fa­mil­iar sur­round­ings and there are shad­ows, strange noises and chasms of deaf­en­ing si­lence.

But I am not out of my com­fort zone. Our wild home on the fringe of a serra and for­est is fa­mil­iar ground. We have lived hap­pily for a very long time with na­ture soar­ing, scur­ry­ing, slith­er­ing, scam­per­ing. The now al­most nightly vis­its of grunt­ing boar right up to the house, wreck­ing ter­raced walls and break­ing ir­ri­ga­tion pipes, are ir­ri­tat­ing and as­tound­ing (given their cheek), but not fright­en­ing.

We are long used to walk­ing the land at dusk and in the dark. Now we are wary.

It started with a bark.

We were work­ing late in the farm­house of­fice, fun­nelling olive oil or­ders through our on­line ac­count­ing sys­tem. Yawn. It was about 10pm. Night had al­most fallen. Sud­denly, right out­side our back door, a few feet from us, came a high-pitched ca­nine call.

“What the hell was that?”

Fox? Per­haps, but they tend to scream. It was too rapid a bark, com­ing in short vol­leys.

Mag­gie went to the win­dow in the dark­ened kitchen. I opened the back door. It barked again, what­ever it was, very close, but my rea­son­ably good eyes could not ad­just. I’m a tad deaf in my left ear which makes track­ing sound dif­fi­cult, but I was pretty sure it was com­ing from just in front and above me.

Out­side the back door there are three me­tres of con­crete then steps up to grass and two vast Cyprus trees and some head-high plum trees. I clapped my hands. There was a pause and then Mag­gie yelled. Some­thing vast had flown away from the house into our olive grove.

The bark­ing faded with it. A bark­ing bird. A vast bird. I fol­lowed and it re­treated up the land.

It was a Bubo Bubo (ar­guably the lovelies of Latin names). But it is daunt­ing, and it is out there, right there, watch­ing, wait­ing. I keep hear­ing it, bark­ing when alarmed but also hoot­ing.

Eagle owls are vast, fear­less, won­drous works of art with a wingspan of al­most two me­tres, eyes that look into your soul, and the talons, power and gall to take on a fox, a young deer, a goshawk, other owls even a wild boar piglet.

We fig­ure that must be the lure. We have been knee-deep in boar, as I said, many of them striped in­fants, for most of the dry sum­mer, the hogs in­dif­fer­ent to our torch beams and our bel­low­ing, blithely gob­bling up hazel nuts, figs and other fruits, plough­ing the ground where there are leaks in our water pipes.

Rab­bits, Bubo Bubo’s sta­ple prey, are as rare as hen’s teeth here. There are ro­dents and other birds for it to feed on, but they have al­ways been here. No, it must be the carousel of the ever in­creas­ing, noc­tur­nal pigs.

Are we wrong? An­swers on a post­card, please, or maybe drop a line to Cat­alo­nia Today.