Week 17
Discussion
About Owls
Owl Mythology
Owls have been either venerated or feared for millennium. The ancient Greeks associated them with Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom; specifically, the Little Owl (A. noctua). It was protected by the Athenians, and large numbers of them lived in the Acropolis. Seeing an owl in flight over a battlefield was taken as a sign of impending victory. The tetradrachm (1 tetradrachm = 4 drachmae) below from 499 B.C. has a image of Athena on the obverse and a Little Owl on the reverse.
The Romans believed that the hoot of an owl presaged an impending death. The following line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar refers to this belief:
"... yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking."
The sight of an owl is said to have foretold the Roman defeat at the battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C. Roman witches were supposed to transform into owls to suck the blood of babies.
In Early Modern England, poets Robert Blair and William Wordsworth referred to Barn Owls as birds of doom. The screech of an owl flying past the window of a sick person meant death would come soon. Various Barn Owl screeches predicted the weather. In some parts of England, it was good luck to see an owl.
A whole host of meanings were associated with owls by various native American tribes.
Owls could be witch's familiars. In the Harry Potter books, however, Hedwig, a Snowy Owl, was more a mail-delivery pet and friend than a familiar.
Fukurō is the Japanese word for owl. It is also a word meaning no hardship. Though written differently in kanji, the two words are homophones. Because of this association, owls are symbols of luck and good fortune in Japan. Owl-shaped charms and trinkets are very common, and they make popular gifts.
About Owls
There are over 250 species of owls in the world, all belonging to the order strigiformes. They are further divided into two families, True (or Typical) owls (Strigidae), and Barn-owls (Tytonidae). Some owl species are depicted below:
From the Jan.-Feb. 2015 issue of Audubon Magazine.
Top row, left to right
Barn Owl: Up to 15 inches tall; 1 pound; All continents (except Antarctica) but stays away from colder latitudes
Eurasian Eagle-Owl: 23-29 inches tall; 3-9 pounds; Europe and Asia
Flammulated Owl: 6 inches tall; 2 ounces; Southwestern Canada through the western U.S. to Mexico
Eastern Screech-Owl: 6-10 inches tall; less than half a pound: East of the Rocky Mountains, U.S. to northeastern Mexico
Bottom row, left to right
Great Horned Owl: 1.5-2 feet tall; 3-5 pounds; All of continental North America and much of South America
Mexican Spotted Owl: 18 inches tall; 1 pound; From Mexico north through Arizona and New Mexico to Utah and Colorado
Spectacled Owl: 18 inches tall; 1-2 pounds; Mexico and Central America to the northern two-thirds of South America
Long-eared Owl: 15 inches tall; half a pound; North America, Europe, Asia, and locally in North Africa, with some wintering south to Mexico and southern China
One of the nine species of owl native to Japan is the Japanese Scops Owl (6.5-12 inches; 7 oz.). It is also found in China, Korea, and Russia.
Most owls are nocturnal and live solitary lives, though some like the Burrowing Owl are active during the day, too. They have excellent hearing and extraordinarily good eyesight, but they have no sense of smell. For that reason, they can go after prey that other animals avoid; skunks, for example. As for their eyesight, owls don't have eyeballs. Instead, they have elongated tubes. Because of this, owls can only see in the direction their heads facing. As compensation, owls can rotate their heads as much as 270 degrees; 3/4 of a circle. This is facilitated by 14 neck vertebrae as opposed to the merely 7 that humans have.
Owls have specially designed feathers that suppress air turbulence when they fly, making their flight almost totally silent. No matter how sensitive your hearing, you will not be able to hear the Short Eared-Owl below flying on your computer.
Owls sallow their food whole or in large chunks; no chewing. Once their digestive systems have finished with what is usable, the left-overs are regurgitated in the form of compressed pellets. These owl pellets can be examined to learn what owl diets are like.
We once had a Great Horned Owl nesting in a tall palm tree we used to have in our front yard next to the driveway. From time to time, owl pellets would decorate the ground and driveway around the tree and need to be cleaned up. They tended to be a bit moist when fresh, so we were careful about how we disposed of them.
Barn Owls
There are about 20 species of barn owls (family Tytonidae) in the world. The Common Barn Owl is the most widely distributed owl species in the world and one of the most widespread of all birds. It thrives in areas with human agricultural activity.
Most barn owls other than the common barn owl are poorly studied, and five are threatened with extinction. Barn owls are distinguished in particular by their heart-shaped faces. The face shapes and the stiff feathers surrounding them help to amplify and locate the source of sounds when hunting. Instead of hooting (only a few owl species hoot), barn owls make a high-pitched shriek.
Barn owls tend to live either singly or in pairs. They mate for life ... .
... and produce cute offspring (or ugly ones, but don't tell that to their parents).
Burrowing Owls
There are 18 recognized species of burrowing owls, two of which are extinct. Burrowing owls are notable for living underground in holes previously dug by ground squirrels, prairie dogs, et. al. A common habitat is open grassland, prairie, or arid regions. Their relatively long legs have adapted them for sprinting on the ground. They tend to perch on a high spot searching for prey instead of hunting while in flight.
Burrowing owls usually mate for life but sometimes males take two mates. They have been known to live in loose colonies.
Living underground has its hazards. Burrowing owls fall prey to rattlesnakes, coyotes, and other land predators. When threatened, they retreat to their burrows and make a hissing sound like a rattlesnake to warn away danger.
Burrowing owls tend to decorate the entrance ways and upper portions of their burrows and nests with a wide variety of material, mammal dung among them. It helps to have no sense of smell. Some think the manure is supposed to attract dung beetles, a favorite food of burrowing owls along with other Insects, spiders, millipedes, etc. They are unique among owls in eating fruit and seeds, too.
And, of course, there are youngsters to feed.
Artwork
Netsuke
Traditional Japanese clothing for both men and women had no pockets in the western sense. Women sometimes had greatly elongated, pendulous sleeves into which they could store items, but men's styles didn't have that feature. Instead, Japanese men used netsuke and inro like those shown below.
The segmented container is an inro. Each section can store small items. The round object just above the inro holding it closed, is an ojime. The inro is attached to a netsuke (the horse carving in this case) by a cord. The netsuke would be pushed up under a man's tightly wound obi (sash) and hold the combination in place. A netsuke could be any small object that wouldn't easily slip past the obi, but they were frequently carved figures that are highly regarded art objects today. The Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA) has well over a hundred of them on display by the ground-level entrance of its Japanese Pavilion. It has many inro on display, too.
The netsuke shown below is an owl on a tree branch. It dates from the 19th century. The artist is unknown.
Nichokuan Soga (1625 – 1660)
Little is known of either Nichokuan or his father, Chokuan. Both were respected painters of birds. Hawks were a specialty of Nichokuan's. It is uncertain when the kakejiku (hanging scroll) painting below of an Owl on a Pine Branch was painted.
Kitagawa Utamaro (1753 – 1806)
Utamaro is one of Japan's most famous ukiyo-e artists. He is best remembered for his pictures of beautiful women, many of which were set in the living quarters of workers in Edo's Yoshiwara district. For this reason, some people call him Japan's Toulouse-Lautrec. He is one of the few artists who became famous throughout Japan in his lifetime. In the mid-19th century, his work was discovered by French impressionist painters with whom his use of partial views and emphasis on light and shade was greatly admired and imitated. Utamaro was arrested in 1804 for illegally making prints of one of Japan's 16th century military rulers. The experience broke his health, and he died two years later.
Less famous than his prints of Edo's demimonde are Utamaro's nature pictures. The picture of Owl and Bullfinches below appeared in a book, Momo chidori kyôka awase, published about 1790.
Sakai Hōitsu (1761–1829)
Hōitsu studied with Kanō school masters, but is known today primarily as a Rinpa school artist. He is credited with having revived the painting style of Ogata Kōrin (1658 – 1716), one of the Rinpa school's founding masters. Hōitsu reproduced several of Kōrin's works and those of Kōrin's equally famous brother, Ogata Kenzan (1663 – 1743) as well as producing many original works of his own.
The picture from a kakejiku (hanging scroll) below depicts several small birds taking revenge on a blind owl for attacks he made on them at night.
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858)
Hiroshige is most famous for his ukiyo-e series, The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. He did numerous other works of art, too, like this 1834 print of an owl either napping or looking for a snack on the ground.
