Tawny Owl
£25.00
A lot of lies about tawny owls, from the ‘Lies About Birds’ series. (Scroll down to read the text.) Illustrated with a poor photograph of a paper bird I have made out of old RSPB magazines.
A4 print, mounted (and put in a cellophane bag to prevent escapes)
(Please note that, regretfully, I don’t send work outside of the UK.)
1 in stock
“Tawny owls are not, in fact, nocturnal. They are simply so scared of the dark that they choose to sleep during daylight hours and stay vigilant all night. Preferring to live in woodland doesn’t help as woods are dark, eerie places favoured by the makers of horror movies, and trees are notorious pranksters. Trees really enjoy loudly dropping twigs in the dead of night or waving their branches menacingly when the moon is bright and there is no wind. Tawny owls are ashamed of their fear of the dark and try to spook each other to make themselves feel braver. Hence the eldritch, unearthly mutterings you will hear from the tops of trees on quiet nights, interspersed with a loud ‘hoo’ (or ‘boo’) designed to unsettle the hardiest soul. They have also perfected silent flight so they can sneak up on each other undetected. The famous ‘Too-whit, too-whoo’ should more accurately be annotated as follows: Owl 1 ‘Hoo’. Owl 2 (startled) ‘Twit.’”
