Owl Therapy 5th February 2025

We have all had bad dreams Last night I had a recurrence of the unpleasant dreams that sometimes beset me. Those convoluted memories that lurk in the deepest recesses of my brain 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 strong 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 although not feeling great I find myself mentally in a much better place.

This morning I felt more low than for somewhile, 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 be found outside of the house but where? Last Saturday I had enjoyed immensely watching the Short eared Owls at Hawling in Gloucestershire. I like the place and who cannot fail to be thrilled when surrounded by flying 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 the now familiar elevated plateau near Hawling where the 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 stones mottled grey and white, testament to its ancient ancestry.and that brought a sense of a historical past to this isolated spot. 

The wall formed an uneven and uncertain barrier twixt footpath and field and is now beginning to show its age with signs of disrepair where the uppermost stones have fallen. but the cost of replacing or repairing them no longer viable.

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

From my elevated position the land flowed away in gentle curves and swellings, soft contours,  a sea of benign winter emptiness stretching for miles, melting into a grey, hazy distance land and sky became as one. The 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 silent emptiness that enveloped the land.

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 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 but then thought better of it and fell silent, its notes lost in the emptiness of land and sky. 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 telephone wire. From a far distant stand of winter trees came the wild laugh of a Green Woodpecker and late on a Barn Owl ghosted its way along one of the wind tattered hedgerows. The land felt as though it was waiting.Spring is now not so far away. 

I sought a place where I could stand alone to join 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 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, more action shots than classic magazine type images. 

The owls were flying virtually from when I arrived at noon and this time were more vocal than before, rasping calls sounding like distant 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 and feeling content on the muddy footpath that crossed this high point of the Cotswolds.No mountains, no tumbling rivers or watefarlls, no glens but just a gentle undulating landscape that in its own understated way although unremarkable was still beautiful and felt rewarding.

Mission accomplished