Birdy Come Lately
Blogger: Campaign Manager for the Barn Owl, Shane Wohlers
Haere Mai to New Zealand’s “new kids on the block,” the country’s latest avian “hip young gunslingers”: the Barn Owls.
Barn Owl, Photo: Richard Ficher
Yes the plural is mightily important as without it these go-getting little fluff-balls wouldn’t hold their newly-minted New Zealand native citizenship–they would still be classed as vagrants. Vagrancy was a title this species held for close on sixty years; Barn Owls had been reported around Westland, Northland and Auckland, but never in “the family way”–that critical step in shifting a visiting species out of slumdog status and into the “native” category.
You can understand why it took sixty years, heaven knows it should have taken longer. Simply put, it’s a hard-knock life trying to go native. For one thing, you must have arrived here under your own steam. For the Barn Owl that means having flown from Australia. That is an incredible feat of endurance given they are not built for long-distance flight. Some suggest that massive bushfire updraughts and gale-force winds may have helped them get here. Sheer awesomeness may have also played a part.
And as Forest & Bird’s Mark Bellingham points out there’s no warm welcome once you arrive. For vagrants it’s a life of “stomach aches, loneliness, unanswered mating calls and scraps with unknown foes.” And then you die (usually). The whole perilous Tasman sea crossing and trying to survive as a stranger-in-a-strange-land reads like the opening credits to The Lost Island.
So it’s lucky Barn Owls are classed as an r-selection-type species that favours short life spans and fast breeding. Couple that with genetic traits that give them an edge and they might actually make a life here. They have asymmetric ears which enables them to judge distance and position by sound alone, making them skilled hunter/killers while possibly granting them the ability to wear sunglasses at night and actually get away with it. Yes, they could hunt with their eyes closed if they wanted. Team the ears thing up with black-as-pitch talons, a bad attitude towards rodents, a nocturnal/crepuscular hunting schedule, scary moon-face visage and a scream that induces ice-shock fear at fifty paces and you’ve got a recipe for a plucky little street tough. It’s not by accident they have earned the monikers “ghost-owl,” “demon-owl” and “death-owl” in places they’ve been a long time, such as Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands (a place no way related to this guy).
Still, the bad-rap may be put to some use–perhaps the barn owl will put a dent in the mouse and rat population in Northland. The breeding pair that produced three healthy chicks are based up there and they seem willing to give it a go. Certainly there’s enough food around to help them gain a foot-hold and lend other birds a helping hand. And with the Wingspan Trust keeping an eye on them the Barn Owl might just make it.
Oh, and they play nice with Morepork/Ruru too (I ask you, what’s not to like?).
So go on, vote for the the new kids. They’ve earned it.
PS. While risking avian-orientated flaming on par with the Paglia/Burchill fax war of the early 90s, I offer comment on a few of the other contenders (just in case your Owl-vote was wavering *wags finger*).
Fantails: gauche little flirts
Skua: vomit-inducing harassers. They belong in a bar in Mos Eisley spaceport.
Tui: my feelings on the Tui correlate to a Parnell Ladies’ brunch conversation: “Well yes, Abigail’s daughter (read: The Tui) is beautiful, but in such an obvious way.”
Kakapo: If they were a drummer in a band, they would be this kind of drummer.
Pukeko: The equivalent of the “comic-sans” font. Don’t do it.
