This post will perhaps be more poetic than scientific.
Lately, tawny owls seem to have increased their vocal activity level.
As far as I understand (I have not studied tawny owls too much), they are currently searching for nests and probably reaffirming pair bonds prior to mating.
As I was walking on a forest edge where I have frequently heard tawny owls (and I have seen them flying over the river in places where it is the most readily available open corridor surrounded by denser groves of riparian forest), I suddenly noticed a black ‘shadow’ taking off a branch and soundlessly gliding through the trees away from me.
The owl had been perched very close and I believe I was very lucky I had been gazing at precisely the level where it took wing because otherwise I would never had known there had been an owl at all and I would never have suspected it had moved.
What I found striking was the absolute quietness with which the owl moved.
It felt as if not only the owl had mastered the art of flying without making noise (i.e., avoiding any interactions with objects or air currents as well as applying its own limbs in a manner that produced zero sound)…
It felt almost as if the owl deepened the silence beyond what was natural to that particular place, as if the owl cancelled out even the noises that should have been there (on terms the owl was not there).
I am aware how strange my claim is.
One cannot make a place quieter by being there if they are moving and if they are not stopping others from moving (e.g., having been noticed by prey which then freezes in order not to draw attention; as a result, it could be stated that predators might make their hunting grounds quieter than under circumstances they were not there), can they?
I had not been looking at anything in specific when I noticed the owl and while I have attributed the sighting to mere fortune, on some level, I feel that I was drawn to the movement not because I had actually spotted the movement itself but because the movement seemed sort of ‘unnatural’ with regard to how forest canopies ‘behave’ at night – it was like the black hole of sound.
Some sounds might be beneficial for a predator.
For example, if there is a general rustling, it might distract the prey from subtle, soft noises that the predator makes.
Perhaps windless nights and places without much activity are not the best for hunting.
It might be one of the reasons why it is not easy to catch prey in winter.
Snow itself is often ‘loud’ (e.g., when it is crusty) but nevermind the snow, many species are gone from the temperate and boreal forests during winter (migrated, hibernating etc.) and there is not much background noise and any sound draws attention.
Slightly thawed and refrozen snow can amplify sound waves and there are no leafy canopies and turf to absorb some of those waves, either.
Therefore the soundless flight of the tawny owl in a January night is awe-inspiring without any ‘supernatural’ attributions to it.
However, I still cannot shake off that impression the owl was ‘absorbing’ or ‘cancelling out’ some sound.
On some degree, it might be possible if, for the example, the bird uses some air currents to move and due to resistance, the current is somewhat reduced.
One bird, nevertheless, probably cannot reduce the strength of an air current significantly and any negligible reduction might only be achieved when ‘flying against’ the current in order to stay in one place.
Maybe, in my mind, the black shape of the owl was symbolically associated with the lack of sound and because I know that black objects absorb colour waves, I might have mistakenly extended the trait toward sound waves.
Or perhaps it was the quietness that the sighting evoked in me that… instilled this strange impression.
However, there was something powerful in this imagery and the association it engendered, almost mythical and I thought I might write it down although it can be easily argued against and nothing can be said for it.
It was as if the owl became non-existent but not in a manner that made it not present.
There are stories about invisibility and there are perhaps stories of inaudibility.
But are there stories about those who do not disappear but who remove themselves from the existence of sight and sound?
Their presence does not affect the sight and sound that remains but they become the presence of no sight and no sound adding to the reality what cannot be added to it – adding something that does not exist but that is present, a spiritual reality, a dimension which is a nice popular word sometimes in use.
A dimension which can be entered by those who have conquered the sight and the sound possessing the ability to exist beyond it.
And what it takes is at first to raise no sound and then to move in a way that creates no interaction with anything that could produce sound upon this impact.
And with this lack of impact, this complete and divine non-intervention, one is no longer held by the constraints of the reality that has to have sound.
It is not by taking sounds out of the environment but by becoming the subject that has no sound and that has nothing to do with sound and perhaps the attributes that would normally belong with the sound, become replaced with another type of presence.
A presence of what lies beyond the sound when the sound does not yet exist or no longer exists.
The presence of perhaps all the memories of the sounds and all the promises and threats of the sounds yet to be.
And maybe the owl does not enter that dimension but opens it to the sounds themselves that exist in where it flies.
These sounds then are presented with this space of their ancestry and their future and they are drawn to it, and they would exchange their own opportunity to become produced for the opportunity to witness the sound in its timeless, non-occurring state.
And the sounds are entranced and they become an extension of the state of non-existence which the owl then takes on as its shape while it passes through the space which has been thereby deepened in silence.
The silence has been made as deep as the amount of sounds that the owl attracts to the realm that it governs and for as long as the sounds themselves are beguiled to offer themselves as the ‘immaterial’ for the owl’s own gliding body.
Notes by Ieva 