Nigel Andrew
Some Like it Hoot
Owls loomed large in the birdscape of my suburban boyhood: tawny owls nested in the local parks, ghostly white barn owls glimmered from time to time in the dusk, and the occasional little owl – the owl of Minerva – was to be seen on nearby smallholdings. At night we would hear the tawny owls’ hoots and the less frequent screech of the barn owl. One of the things I learned from Miriam Darlington’s new book is that the French language usefully distinguishes between hooting owls, les hiboux, and screechers, les chouettes.
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