The sunflower irises of a brown hawk owl or brown boobook are a dead giveaway in a shady bamboo clump. They literally pop out when it dawns upon the owl that its cryptic perch stands exposed to humans.
A pair was detected on Thursday morning at the Dr PN Mehra Botanical Gardens of Panjab University, Chandigarh, by Prof Gurpartap Singh and myself. We were looking for birds and contributing as citizen scientists to the Department of Zoology’s research project — Monitoring Avian Species of PU, Chandigarh. As many as 108 avian species have been recorded over time at the campus and formalised in a checklist by the department last month. Doubtless, more species will be added in future years courtesy sustained efforts by the department.
Amid all the virtually-vertical, slippery, soaring branches of the splendid bamboo clumps curated at the gardens, the pair had found one of the few, near-horizontal ones for perching long hours in comfort. While one was wide awake and entrusted with vigilance, the spouse was asleep with eyes firmly covered after a tiring night’s hunt. Spouses take turns to keep watch.
Apart from the eyes flaring on seeing us below, the awake owl was unflappable in its seeming stillness, posturing as if it were merely a natural appendage of bamboo. But when we crossed underneath the pair to take a photograph from another angle of the sleeping spouse, the awake owl abandoned its still life portraiture. It looked below to track our movement with trepidation writ large in its straightforward eyes. The beauty was that the lowering of its head to look directly below was so fluid and so well timed that we almost overlooked that departure from a statuesque status quo.
Riddle of the Siswan cliff
The above picture of the brown fish owl is unclear. But therein lies a tale. Of a master of merge and camouflage, despite being a large owl species whose adults reach 22 inches.
At the Siswan check-dam, an adult had located its perch in a cleft of an eroded cliff amid bushes and an overhanging tree. The owl, with its back to the cliff, had just about a window through the foliage to keep watch below. The cleft was not sun-facing and in shade for most part of the hot day. Thus the owl sat there in solitary splendour like a somnolent Buddha, and virtually invisible in very low light (in winter, the perch is changed to a more sun-facing position for thermoregulation).
The owl’s overall colours melted into the dark brown earth of the shaded cleft. Its positioning was also sniper-like, the plumage akin to the rifleman’s combat fatigues. “This species has a chestnut (reddish-brown), buff-streaked, and barred plumage that mimics the textures of tree bark, shadows, and dense foliage. Coupled with immobility and tactical positioning to blend into the surrounding deciduous vegetation and earthy background makes it virtually undetectable,” remarked Prof. Gurpartap Singh after I took him to the spot on Friday morning.
The owl would never have been discovered had two whitish faecal streakings in the dark cleft not caught my eye from afar on Thursday afternoon. That was the only oddity on the cliff. I instantly realised it could not be a vulture’s discharge because it avoids entangled bush due to its huge wingspan, and lacks an owl’s weaving, ducking flight manoeuvre in foliage. It had to be a big owl’s lair, and my binoculars confirmed the hunch.