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Owl Spotting
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admin
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Posts: 423
Joined: Dec 2002
Post: #1
14-10-2007 09:04 PM

Posts from old forum ...

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Mrjamon
Joined 11-06-2007
Posted on Friday, 28 September, 2007 - 03:49 pm:

Ladies and Gents,
Did any of you folk hear an owl tawit tawooing for a good 10 minutes a couple of nights ago?

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Sandy
Joined 08-10-2006
Posted on Saturday, 29 September, 2007 - 06:08 pm:

We heard an owl or owls in early September (about 3 am on one night and earlier on a couple of other nights) and thought it or they must be on One Tree hill. On the 8th Sept Bat and Moths Night we heard the calls again actually on OTH at round about 9pm.

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Theotherbrian
Joined 28-03-2005
Posted on Tuesday, 02 October, 2007 - 06:12 pm:

Yes, I heard one for a few nights last week. A few times from the direction of One Tree Hill and once from the Tyson Road/Christian Fellowship site. Wasn't it good to hear?!

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Mrjamon
Joined 11-06-2007
Posted on Wednesday, 03 October, 2007 - 09:42 am:

It was great! The direction I heard it from was probably Tyson Road.

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Theotherbrian
Joined 28-03-2005
Posted on Wednesday, 03 October, 2007 - 10:19 pm:

Sadly if the developers have their way, the Tyson Road owl will be evicted.

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Woody
No Longer Registered

Posts: 61
Joined: Oct 2006
Post: #2
15-11-2007 10:27 PM

Amazing, there is a Tawny Owl out there tonight somewhere near Hengrave Road. I was told that there was a pair in Nunhead Cemetery but this is the first time I have heard them in SE23.

Check out this site for a recording of a Tawny Owl in full flow:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguid.../index.asp

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shzl400


Posts: 729
Joined: Oct 2007
Post: #3
16-11-2007 09:54 AM

Woody wrote:
Amazing, there is a Tawny Owl out there tonight somewhere near Hengrave Road. I was told that there was a pair in Nunhead Cemetery but this is the first time I have heard them in SE23.

Check out this site for a recording of a Tawny Owl in full flow:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguid.../index.asp


I heard it too! Couldn't have said what sort it was, though. I've heard them before, though - I was led to believe that they nest on One Tree Hill.

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shzl400


Posts: 729
Joined: Oct 2007
Post: #4
16-11-2007 10:05 AM

Further clarification on owl - I understand that you can tell whether it's male or female, depending on whether it goes too-whit or too-whoo (but I don't know which way round it is...). When you hear both together, it is two owls answering each other.

The one last night was definitely a too-whoo and was in the high trees that are at the back of a block of flats at the crest of Devonshire Road, between Dunoon Road and Tyson Road.

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Cellar Door


Posts: 356
Joined: Oct 2007
Post: #5
12-06-2009 12:06 PM

I can happily confirm that there was an owl in my back garden on Woodcombe Crescent last night at 9-ish. Very pleasant to hear.

I remember reading a book by Margaret Craven called "I Heard the Owl Call My Name" in which according to Native American Indian tradition, if you hear the owl call your name then your death is close to hand. I'm so glad my name isn't Tawit Tawoo.

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Mrjamon


Posts: 46
Joined: Jun 2007
Post: #6
12-06-2009 02:05 PM

That's great news! That you heard an owl that is, not the whole death thing.

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Cellar Door


Posts: 356
Joined: Oct 2007
Post: #7
12-06-2009 02:45 PM

Mrjamon wrote:
That's great news! That you heard an owl that is, not the whole death thing.

It is great news about the owl thing. There could have been two of them hence the "too-whit" and "too-whoo" that shzl400 mentioned above.

There might be a death thing going on, too. There's a crow that sits at the top of one of the largest trees behind our house. Essentially where the old canal used to run in between Woodcombe Crescent and Devonshire Road but is now our collective backyards. This crow has started to visit our cat Blue. They sun themselves sometimes in our backyard. The crow just staying close by but not too close to Blue. (BTW, Blue's a Ragdoll breed so is relatively tolerant of most things. Or he just doesn't give a monkeys as some cats do.) Blue's also getting towards the end of his nine lives.

I pointed this out to my neighbour. He observed that crows are extremely smart and carrion. That they start to follow the weaker creatures when death is creeping up on them. And that I might need to consider that Blue's time is up.

Maybe the owl(s) were calling old Blue's name?

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Mrjamon


Posts: 46
Joined: Jun 2007
Post: #8
13-06-2009 08:25 AM

Ok, stop it now Cellar Door you're scaring me.
Cellar Door..... that's a pretty spooky name as well.

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Cellar Door


Posts: 356
Joined: Oct 2007
Post: #9
13-06-2009 09:18 AM

Mrjamon wrote:
Cellar Door..... that's a pretty spooky name as well.

It's my appreciation of phonoaesthetics I guess. Nothing sinister, Mrjamon. It comes from J. R. R. Tolkien's 1955 essay "English and Welsh":

"Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant."

And very difficult for owls to hoot.

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shzl400


Posts: 729
Joined: Oct 2007
Post: #10
13-06-2009 03:16 PM

Nohing to do with the TV production company Celador, I suppose?

Here's an odd story. When I first saw the cable company "Setanta" name around, I thought that it would make a good name for a hero in a fantasy novel. Only later did I find out they got their name from the original name of the great irish hero C? Chulainn. Spooky!

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Cidered


Posts: 50
Joined: Nov 2007
Post: #11
10-03-2010 01:52 PM

Has anyone else heard the owl(s) of SE23 recently?

I was woken last night by what I think was a tawny owl in a tree outside my flat, it was making a sort of screeching sound quite like the second call on this clip:

http://www.godsownclay.com/TawnyOwls/Cal...r06tr3.mp3

I live at the Honor Oak end of Devonshire Road, so maybe it was a visitor from One Tree hill - or perhaps the proposed Tyson Road development site...

I was also woken later by foxes playing in the garden...and I thought I'd left all this wildlife behind when I moved from cider country to the big city!

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tripandfuschia


Posts: 68
Joined: Apr 2010
Post: #12
17-06-2010 07:53 PM

I have frequently heard what seems it might be an owl from Haredon Close off Dunoon rd. Maybe it's the Tyson rd one? I always assumed it might have been from One Tree Hill

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rymerster


Posts: 72
Joined: Sep 2009
Post: #13
17-06-2010 10:12 PM

I hear all kinds of strange wildlife noises at night because the back of my building backs onto part of the Horniman Gardens. I have heard some truly horrific screeches, one of which repeated for about half an hour, sounding not unlike a small child screaming, but louder and animal-like. I'm guessing it was foxes as I've seen one several times - last time running down Manor Mount with a Sainsburys ready meal in its mouth.

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AMFM


Posts: 306
Joined: Oct 2007
Post: #14
18-06-2010 08:17 AM

Yep - the screeching is definitely foxes and boy is it annoying when you get woken up in the middle of the night by them. 3 nights running now that I've had a rubbish night's sleep because of the foxes - not a happy bunny.

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seeformiles


Posts: 269
Joined: Apr 2005
Post: #15
12-07-2010 07:59 PM

I heard the unmistakable sound of an owl tonight..heard the same last week too.

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dbboy


Posts: 201
Joined: Feb 2009
Post: #16
14-07-2010 01:59 PM

Unhappy bunnies can very quickly become lunch for Mr.Fox.

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DeedeeVonNoodle


Posts: 14
Joined: Mar 2012
Post: #17
16-03-2012 02:41 PM

There was an owl, I think a male Tawny in the gardens between Woodcombe Crescent and Devonshire Road this morning around 6.30-7am. I heard repeated hooting. Beautiful sound!

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