Let’s talk about what happens to India’s Urban Owls in during festivals…
The barn owl stirred from a peaceful slumber and stretched her tawny legs gently, stifling a yawn. She looked around for her mate and found he’d already left for the hunt. The sun had set some time ago and a few crickets were chirping nearby. She looked at the sky with puzzled eyes. Even though she relied more on her ears than eyes, she did have excellent vision. Right now, however, those eyes could only see fogginess around and wispy smoke from afar.
Was it a fire?
But they do not have forest fires in this concrete jungle, do they?
A Grim Outlook
General discomfort gave way to alertness and all her senses perked up. Just as she was about to draw her wings for a silent take-off, there was a loud BOOM! She almost slid off the concrete perch of the abandoned building and gripped the ground tighter with her talons. Her heart was hammering and she couldn’t make sense of what those vibrations and terrifying noise were. Before she could steady herself, the sky erupted into a hundred different bursts of light and blasts with the most horrendous noises her ear canals could capture. She was too stunned to move or even resume normal functioning.
Somewhere in the back of her feisty bird brain, she was worried about her partner- was he out there amongst that terror? Was he safe? They were planning to start a family…they had chosen the perfect spot to raise the nestlings. Why did this have to happen now?
She realised somehow her limbs had frozen; she tried flapping her wings but her entire body went rigid. All she could see was smoke and all she could hear were reverberations of the unthinkably scary booms. Whether they were the echoes of what happened a few seconds ago or they were still going on, she couldn’t say- she was struggling to hold on…to see beyond the smoke…for the palpitations to stop…to just breathe…
The Ecological and Cultural Importance of Owls
Owls, the ‘wolves of the sky’, have existed on this planet for almost 60 million years now, which makes them one of the oldest known groups of birds, Meanwhile, humans have only walked the earth about a fraction of that time, less than 200,000 years. Ironically though, one of the biggest threats to the survival of most owl species today is the Homo sapiens species.
Let’s take a moment to grasp just how indispensable owls are for the ecosystem. For example, their extraordinary sense of hearing, visual acuity and almost inaudible flight make them powerful raptors. Additionally, they are are also apex and meso predators that can potentially increase biodiversity by suppressing abundant mid-level consumers. At present, agricultural scientists are successfully helping farmers naturally control rodent populations by conserving barn owls using artificial nest boxes in India, the United Kingdom, Israel, Jordan, California, and Kenya. Owls potentially provide this ecosystem service even in the cities and towns which they are inhabiting in large numbers today.
From a cultural and religious lens, owls have been a subject of fascination for humans since the beginning of their tryst, which would have been some 30,000 years ago, according to the oldest known depiction of an owl discovered in the Chauvet Cave of France. Sadly, owls have this kind of dualism in our minds. They are tender yet deadly, adorable yet brutal, ferocious yet funny.
Millions of years of oral retelling, revisiting myths, repackaging old beliefs and riveting cultural folktales have led to the creation of a multiverse of owl stories based on centuries of human imagination. Whether it is in pre-historic art, folktales, poems, famous paintings, children’s books, cartoons, religious depictions or totems, owls are omnipresent in the human psyche.
The Plight of India’s Urban Owls
But times have changed. Tragically, our hovering perceptions towards owls have turned over to the darker side, shrouding these birds in veils of misbeliefs and superstitions. Unfortunately, tapid urbanisation has been instrumental in the major dissociation of humans from nature. Today, a lot of situations have led to us, city dwellers shivering when we spot a snake and screaming at the glimpse of rosettes inside city walls.
We resort to stones on hearing a barn owl screech and succumb to superstitious rattle when a jungle crow caws. Sadly, we have convinced ourselves that human life is more precious than wildlife. Consequently, we hide behind glass doors and stone walls to protect that preciousness. We have lost the knowledge our ancestors had to coexist with nature.
Image: Grace Marian
Threats to Urban Owls
Our concrete kingdoms, termed as cities, pose a host of anthropogenic challenges to birds, especially raptors like owls including but not limited to high levels of ambient noise, Artificial Light At Night (ALAN), open waste disposal sites, unsustainable reflective architecture and vehicular traffic that increases the risk of collisions and subsequent mortalities.
Barn owls are one of the most commonly found species in Indian cities. In Salim Ali’s words, barn owls are “inseparable from the haunts of man.” Their hunting behaviour involves flying very close to the ground. As a result, they are particularly susceptible to vehicular collisions and road kills. Rodenticide poisoning is also a common occurrence in barn owls leading to a build-up of toxins in the bird’s system, weakening and possibly eventually killing them, not to mention the deadly kite manjha strings that cut down not just paper and plastic kites but also living, breathing birds.
The Illegal Trade of India’s Owls
In one of our preliminary studies on urban wildlife rescues in Guwahati, we found that barn owls have been the most rescued birds in the city between 2010 and 2018, and the rescues peak between September to November, in other words, the festival season. The abominably loud crackers releasing fumes that we burst during Diwali are harmful enough for these nocturnal raptors.
It is also during this time every year, that some states in India suddenly start demanding the capture and sale of owls, the vahanas of Goddess Lakshmi. This is for what can only be termed as a disturbing ritual of owl sacrifice to appease the goddess held in the firm misbelief that doing so will ensure their wealth is never exhausted. These beliefs coupled with a hoard of misconceptions surrounding owls have led to a breach of empathy towards these birds, adding risks to survival in their already difficult lives.
| In 2019, the police rescued five owls from two smugglers in Uttar Pradesh, meant to be sacrificed on Diwali night. In 2020 the forest department apprehended a bird seller in Hyderabad and rescued 15 barn owls from his possession. In 2021, a barn owl meant for black magic rituals was seized from traffickers in Gujarat and another barn owl was seized in the state in 2022, by Wildlife SOS and the state forest department. A mottled wood owl was seized by the forest department in Satara last year just before Diwali from illegal captivity, but unfortunately, its life couldn’t be saved. |
Image: Debangini Ray
The Dilemma of Cultural Significance
From the time humans learnt how to communicate, storytelling has been a way through which elders teach the young and vulnerable to predict and prepare for danger. But over time a lot of these stories have succumbed to the subjective nature of storytellers and unfortunately, have been misinterpreted over time, shaping certain beliefs and perceptions of people towards non-human animals. Owls are trapped in a tricky conundrum where they are sometimes worshipped or represented as cultural and religious symbols, on the other hand, they are associated with death, darkness and doom.
In India, members of the Garo tribe of Meghalaya, refer to owls (and nightjars) as doang, which means that the birds are believed to call out at night when a person is going to die. People in Assam and West Bengal use the name “kaal pesa/pecha” for medium-sized brown owls as they are believed to be omens of death. There are hundreds of such cultural connotations in India (and in other countries as well), and all we need to do is ask our parents and grandparents to know more about them.
What can you do?
Oftentimes, I get phone calls from people who share similar dilemmas where their neighbours want to get rid of barn owls roosting in the area because they perceive their harsh screeches as ill omens in the night. Moreover, there are instances where barn owls are chased away or stones are pelted at the mere sight of them. As Miriam Darlington rightly wrote about barn owls and humans, “Our closeness has developed over time like a marriage, but not an altogether happy one.”
There are a few basic things we can start doing to initiate a change in this dismal state of affairs. Firstly, resisting the urge to handle an injured owl and instead, trying to contact rescuers/ forest officers or vets. Secondly, educating our kids about the importance of owls in our ecosystem helps in busting myths around them. Crucially reporting mishandling or trafficking of owls to wildlife organisations or law enforcement authorities in your town or city can foster coexistence by minimising conflict between humans and owls.
As citizens, let’s take responsibility for our actions. Let’s try to restore our empathy and avoid being witnesses to the destruction of ecologically and culturally important species around us. Maybe we can add some light and spread some hope this Diwali, not through crackers and LED lights but through awareness and busting myths.
The Urban Owl Project
The Urban Owl Project aims to study owls across cityscapes in India through multispecies ethnography. Moreover, it aims at understanding how humans and owls coexist within shared urban spaces and the impacts one may have on the other. Additionally, the study also works towards dispelling cultural misbeliefs and animosity that humans may have towards these nocturnal raptors and informs citizens about current anthropogenic threats that seriously impact owl populations.
You can follow it on Instagram @urbanowlnetwork or write to the team at urbanowlnetwork@gmail.com. You can share your owl encounters and rescues, submit photographs or share other content. It would immensely help the project if you could fill out our Google Form to understand human-owl dynamics in cities.
~Debangini Ray
PhD Student, Centre for Sustainability Studies, MIT World Peace University, Pune
Founder, Urban Owl Network-India
References:
- Bird seller arrested, 15 barn owls rescued. (2020, December 24). Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/bird-seller-arrested-15-barn-owls-rescued/articleshow/79930151.cms
- Browning, Mark. 2016. “New Nest Box Study Revolutionizes Using Barn Owls for Rodent Control.” 2016. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-nest-box-study-revolutionizes-using-barn-owls-for-rodent-control-300206759.html.
- Das, Kasturi. 2022. “Barn Owl: The Farmer’s Friendly Neighbourhood Pest Controller.” February 21, 2022. https://roundglasssustain.com/wildvaults/barn-owl-farmers.
- Darlington, M. (2019). Owl Sense (Main edition). Guardian Faber Publishing
- Hindmarch, S., Elliott, J. E., Mccann, S., & Levesque, P. (2017). Habitat use by barn owls across a rural to urban gradient and an assessment of stressors including, habitat loss, rodenticide exposure and road mortality. Landscape and Urban Planning, 164, 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.04.003
- Jackson, J. A. (2004). Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia, Volume 9: Birds II. Gale Group.
- Marzluff, J. M., & Ewing, K. (2001). Restoration of Fragmented Landscapes for the Conservation of Birds: A General Framework and Specific Recommendations for Urbanizing Landscapes. Restoration Ecology, 9(3), 280–292.
- Ogada, Darcy. 2008. “Rural Culture and The Conservation of Mackinders Eagle Owls (Bubo Capensis Mackinderi) in Kenya.” Journal of Avian Medicine and Surgery 22 (July): 158–60. https://doi.org/10.1647/2007-036R.1.
- Panchamiya, N. (2022, October 24). Bound, choked and tortured—Diwali isn’t bright for Indian owls. ThePrint. https://theprint.in/opinion/bound-choked-and-tortured-diwali-isnt-bright-for-indian-owls/1177623/
- Washburn, Brian E. 2018. “Human-Raptor Conflicts in Urban Settings.” In Urban Raptors: Ecology and Conservation of Birds of Prey in Cities, edited by Clint W. Boal and Cheryl R. Dykstra, 214–28. Washington, DC: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-841-1_15.