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The show that explores what makes Sri Lanka Sri Lankan.
The Pride Owl | Flying High in Sri Lanka
He hooted when least expected and claimed his rightful place. But who was he, and what made him proud?
The owl’s hoot kicked it all off.
It was 5.49 am, and it rang out, sonorous, low, loud but not noisy. Mellow. Rather beautiful. Almost bewitching. A thing of the night, heard in the day. Just like Gay Pride, sounding out exactly where it shouldn’t.
This is June, the season of Pride marches, lighting up the so-so diary pages of many souls within the good globe’s silent minority.
The owl was certainly late to bed. Most other creatures were already up – excepting the monkeys that is, who – like languid diplomats – were still reaching for their jungle equivalent of morning croissants and in-bed latte – before deigning to recognise that the day had started.
But it certainly started. And the owl’s lateness to bed made me feel guilty on its behalf. Had it been an all-night owl party? Back from the wing version of a long road trip? Insomnia? Nightmares that stopped it from risking sleep?
Guilt manages to seep into almost everything. And Owl Pride is clearly this wise rejoinder to this nonsense, night sounding by day. Of course, many Pride events have now become Mega Pride Happenings, planned months in advance, like coronations or music festivals, with corporate sponsors and ticketed admission. You can buy Pride candles, Pride mortgages, Pride bed accessories, Pride cakes, Pride phone condoms, and pretty much anything else so badged. But when the assembled marchers sing Tony Robinson’s legendary anthem “Sing if you’re glad to be gay,” it is really just the chorus that is appreciated, blasted out like “Rule Britannia”. The bitterly ironic other verses about violence, humiliation, and injustice are washed away, no longer understood today.
It’s an awfully long way from Stonewall, 1969, when the New York gay community just randomly fought back one night after an especially egregious piece of police harassment. Their defiance and courage set off a mighty avalanche. All the Prides worldwide stem from that, and the best are still the most local, in tiny towns and villages rather than some borrowed city. In these very local spaces, people claim the right to be themselves in exactly their own streets and homes. Not unlike my little jungle owl this morning.
I say little, but he may be tiny and very good at projecting his voice.
The authoritative International Ornithologists' Union recognises 255 bird species worldwide as owls of one kind or another. Looked at from this perspective, my Sri Lankan owl is a member of a very high-achieving club. Sri Lanka has but 0.01% of the world’s land mass, yet hosts 0.8% of its endemic owl species.
In a country that has been repeatedly invaded by Cholas, Tamils, Dutch, Portuguese, British – even the Danish at one point - endemic is something of a debating point, and the owl world is no less alive to this controversy than the human one. Whilst some Sri Lankans claim there are but two endemic species, others claim there are actually three.
Both camps take great pride in the endemic Sri Lankan Serendib Scops Owl. It is a species new to science since just 2004, and, as a rainforest night roamer, is almost impossible to see.
Its detection was a long-drawn-out process for Deepal Warakagoda, the Sri Lankan ornithologist and a pioneer in natural history sound recordings. He first noted its sounds in 1995, for it emitted the most distinctive quivering notes. It was not until 2001 that he actually saw the creature. “It was just after dawn that the first-ever observations of the species were made, in a flashlight beam, at the Sinharaja rainforest,” he wrote. It took until 2004 before sufficient further research had been done to justify naming the discovery as a totally new species of bird – the first since 1868, when the Sri Lanka Whistling-Thrush was described.
The other endemic owl on which there is broad agreement about its endemic status is the Chestnut-backed Owlet, a small, stocky fellow barely 8 inches long, but at least more visible, as it can often be seen during the day and into the early evening.
But it is over the third owl, the Sri Lanka Bay Owl, that eager taxological arguments rage about its status and endemic-ness – for this owl apparently calls both Kerala and Sri Lanka home. It is something of a beauty. Coming in at around 10 inches in length, with a white feathered body and gorgeous white disc of a face, its eye area is picked out in darker feathers as if it has visited a Beauty Salon specialising in Baroque eye brows and eyelashes. It is more than likely that my Pride owl today was such a one, beautifully if not outrageously dressed, singing away day or night, proud to be an owl.
But it’s just as likely that he was in fact one of the non-endemic species that have passed the challenging Sri Lankan Department of Immigration citizenship tests to become firmly resident in the country.
The Brown Fish Owl, more fondly known as the Brown Boobook, is one of these Resident Aliens. Some 13 inches in length, it is one of the most commonly seen owls, happily urbanised.
But if trying to decide on which owl was mine by its call alone, I might opt for the Brown Wood Owl. This species is large (17 inches in length) and, though shy, has loud, reverberating hoots. It is a real Owl’s Owl - large, serious black eyes set off within a frame of white feathers on darker ones. Cuter, though smaller (10 inches in length), are the Collared Scoups Owl or its cousin, the Indian Scoups Owl. Both come complete with those delightful tell-tale ears or head tufts - like Yoda in Star Wars - that give it the appearance of being able to listen to your every problem.
Two last Resident Aliens make up the island’s Owl tally. The Barn Owl, seen everywhere, is more often heard first, for it has an ear-shattering shriek that it enjoys drawing out to its fullest.
But nothing beats the Spot-bellied Eagle Owl. This massive raptor, some 3 feet in length, is the world’s sixth-largest owl and is well distributed in Sri Lanka’s forests. Its grey and white markings make it easy to spot, and the ledge-shaped tufts that lie horizontally over its eyes give it a learned and quizzical look. But it is its savage, human-sounding shrieks that have granted it the greatest notoriety, for on the island it is also known as the Devil Bird and its cry is said to portend death.
Neither of these two is likely to have been my little Pride Owl.
As I write, Coco’s six tiny puppies are chewing my feet, Bertie barking at the giant squirrels in the Ebony Tree, and the Owl has moved on. I like to think of it in its tree hole, feet up, sipping a cocoa laced with whiskey, a trail of glittering clothes strewn across the floor. He is getting ready for bed. He has done his thing. He has hooted when least expected and claimed his rightful place.
That was a production written and recorded by David Swarbrick at The Ceylon Press, based in the jungle north of Kandy, at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, and set up to tell the story of Sri Lanka.