In this era of CCTV cameras, we are often under surveillance in the city. But few realise that, if we are out at night and anywhere near parks and gardens, other cryptic eyes may also be watching you.

44 | BWA October 2014

In the darkest hours when most of us are asleep, particular warm-blooded creatures emerge. No, they are not vampires. In our parks, they’re mostly Ringtail and Brushtail Possums, but as they forage for food, other formidable predators lurk nearby. One that is well known to us is the Southern Boobook, but less recognised is the Powerful Owl, Ninox strenua, the supreme nocturnal predator of south-eastern Australia. It is the largest of all Australia’s owls, with a wingspan of up to 1.2 metres.

There are many oddities about the Powerful Owl. The male is larger than the female – unusual among birds of prey – and it is a mid-year breeder, with its young raised by the time many birds wake from winter and begin courting. They are the first of the hawk owls to nest, three months ahead of the Southern Boobook. And so regular are their habits that in normal circumstances they lay eggs each year on or around the same day, often in the last days of May. Elusive and scarce, there may be as few as five hundred pairs remaining, yet they have been seen in Melbourne’s parks and gardens.

I have a weekend property just one hour north of Melbourne in the Tallarook Ranges, and almost all year round a mated pair of Powerful Owls roost not far from the house. As darkness approaches their deep resonating double hoot indicates they are about to leave the daylight perch – but nothing will hear them launch into the night air. Among all birds, an owl’s primary feathers are uniquely structured for silent flight. By day I can observe the owls staring down from their canopied roost tree, their golden eyes observing me carefully, their huge talons curved superbly around the limb, two toes opposing two others – a formidable hunting device. Beneath the tree there are many large, regurgitated pellets. These are the dry clumps of fur and bone that cannot

be digested and are perfect indicators of the bird’s diet. I have submitted these to Museum Victoria and have been informed that the remains belong to various species of possum including the sugar glider.

Unfortunately for both glider and owl, their habitat is now greatly diminished and isolated to remnant pockets of a particular kind of bushland. For the Powerful Owl, old growth is essential with ideal nesting hollows found in trees 350 to 500 years old. This nocturnal raptor is now listed as Endangered in Victoria and only exists in our area because the land is useless to farmers.

BWA October 2014 | 45

No more than a bushy bump of some 10,000 hectares, the Tallarook Ranges sit amidst a sweeping rural landscape. Made up entirely of granite, the mountain was formed in the Upper Devonian Period and is not an extinct volcano but a rocky cone that slowly crystallised deep within the earth’s crust. It now stands some 600 metres above the surrounding farm fields because of its hardness: 400 million years has eroded away the surrounding earth. And our owls hang on here precariously.

Last winter, just before nightfall I ventured deep into the forest and sat on a steep slope where I could watch a hollow in an ancient Yellow Box tree. I wanted to see if the owls were nesting. It was bitterly cold and the dew dripped from the thick overhead foliage. Darkness fell and I sat on a damp log, the air eerily silent, the unknown creeping in, enveloping my sense of well-being. In such a strange and timeless space, the city world I come from contrasts like a clap of thunder. I waited an hour, but no owls appeared.

The next day I returned to our inner-city apartment. That night, with the owls still firmly in mind, I took a walk into our local park. I know this green space has plenty of possums as well as a number of owls. Looking for owls by day, I have learned not to look up, but down. Birds of prey excrete characteristic, white splatters of guano on the ground, a sure sign of their presence. Occasionally one can also find their distinctive regurgitated pellets, which may indicate a regular roosting branch.

In the darkness, I walked right through the densely treed areas to the other side of the park. The yellow street lights in the distance cast soft circles on the grass, bicycle lights flickered weakly through the tree trunks, a siren could be heard far over the red rooftops. But I saw no feathered life at all. I decided to march for home, wondering why I had imagined I’d see anything at all, as though the night predators were there expressly to entertain me. But just as I approached the edge of the park, a dark ghost-like form swept soundlessly overhead. I tried to follow its trajectory, but as fast as it appeared, that mysterious bird again melted completely and silently into the night.

Robert Hollingworth’s new novel is The Colour of the Night (Hybrid Publishers, $24.95), and is available in all good bookstores. It tells the story of Shaun Bellamy, an orphaned country boy. We learn of Shaun’s intimate bushland experiences, but now he must go to the city where he meets a host of mixed-up souls and confronts modern life full on. Can his world of benign nature and this new one of frenetic culture, be reconciled?