Owl Therapy 5th February 2025

We all have bad dreams Last night I had a recurrence of this unpleasantness that sometimes besets me in times of stress. Those convoluted memories that lurk in the deepest recesses of my head and I thought had been forgotten dredged up, a by product of the anxiety that haunts me but now familiar enough to be generally bearable when they occur. Last night they came thick and fast, memories of events years ago, grotesquely distorted, plumbed from the unfathomable maze of synapses in my brain. These nightmares leave me on edge and disoriented when I awaken, unsettled and unable to function properly.The temptation to lie in bed and fret is ever present but from experience I know my discomfort will not depart by so doing and it is best to rise and do something, anything to take my mind off my situation and when I do the worst of the bad feelings depart and I find myself in a much better place.

This morning I felt more low than for some while, the grey, dispiriting gloom of the previous days not helping my mood and knew I  needed something to lift me out of the mental rut in which I found myself,. Something other than the usual remedies  that I revert to in such situations. On the positive side it was a bright sunny morning so salvation would best be found outside of the house but where? Last Saturday I took immense enjoyment from watching the Short eared Owls at Hawling in Gloucestershire. I like the place and who cannot fail to be thrilled when surrounded by the daylight hunting owls.This I determined would be the perfect antidote to my situation.

Fast forward two hours and I was stood by a drystone wall on a now familiar elevated plateau near Hawling where a large acreage of rough grass fields, home to the owls, stretched away beyond the wall, its stones now ancient but laid with such care and skill by a craftsman's long forgotten hand  that they still formed an effective barrier despite the passage of time, the mosses and lichens staining the mottled grey and white stones, testament to its ancient ancestry.and that brought a sense of the historical past to this isolated spot. 

The wall formed an uneven and uncertain barrier twixt footpath and field and showed its age by the obvious signs of disrepair and abandonment where the uppermost stones have come loose or fallen. but replacing or repairing them is no longer of concern, the wall's original function long redundant.

The impression of remoteness in this northern Cotswold landscape is enhanced by these stone walls, a feature that I associate with more rugged terrain, the romance of high mountains and the rough moorland of northern Britain.This in a direct contradiction to the more prosaic fences and manicured hedgerows that prevail in guarding fields in my part of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, only a few miles to the east.

From my elevated position the land flowed away in gentle undulations and swellings, soft contours and shallow valleys,  a vision of winter emptiness stretching for miles, merging into a grey, hazy distance where land and sky became as one. The previously bright sun was now but a white amorphous disc behind a veil of thin cloud. I could feel a light  wind at my back and almost touch the silence that enveloped the land where I stood.

Birdlife, other than the owls  appears scarce but look and listen closer and there are rewards.

Pheasants, turned feral, strutted in the long grass, safe from guns in this protected area, the cocks half hidden, their burnished mahogany breast feathers, green heads and long tail spikes  all that is visible in the rank grass as they squared up to each other. An optimistic Skylark tried out a few sweet cadences, the notes almost lost in an emptiness of sky but then fell silent. Crows,their black forms stark  against the pale sky rowed their way in buoyant flight across the fields and a kestrel, borne by fast flickering wings, beat a hasty passage from hedge to a distant telephone wire. A hundred strong flock of Starlings rose from the grass, instinctively forming a synchronised hologram of black dots before raining back down to earth to fuss and probe for leatherjackets in the rough grass

From a distant stand of bare winter trees came the wild laugh of a Green Woodpecker and later on a Barn Owl ghosted its way along a wind tattered hedgerow. 

A winter landscape but it felt that Spring is now not so far away. 

I sought a place where I could stand alone in this vast cathedral of land and sky and felt a calm come over me, now fully diverted from my earlier upset by my surroundings and the forever exciting prospect of photographing the owls for one more time. 

What would today bring? 

This time the owls came even closer and in an uncharacteristic display of self control I disciplined myself to take just individual shots and only when the owls came particularly near.

There is little fun in repeating oneself so I tried for different images this time, something out of the ordinary, more action shots than classic magazine type images. To me the camera can reveal so much more about a bird's actions than just the standard poses or classic flight images

The owls were flying virtually from when I arrived at noon and this time were more vocal than yesterday,rasping calls, sounding like distant alarmed snipe coming regularly from the flying birds as they voiced their indignation at being harassed by the opportunistic crows and kestrels.

For three hours I stood alone as the owls came and went, feeling content on the muddy footpath that crossed this high point of the Cotswolds.No mountains, no tumbling rivers or waterfalls, no glens but a gentle unthreatening landscape that although unremarkable was reward enough.

Mission accomplished.