Owl Feather

Watching Winterwatch last night, after the pic that I tweeted, they had a nice section about owls, and how they manage to fly so silently. The feather they used looked familiar, after I had (rather gruesomely) found two detached wings a little way from the house during the day.

I went back today to fetch a few feathers, and I'm 99% certain this used to be attached to a Tawny Owl. The little 'spikes' are a feathered edge which (cos of fluid dynamics and stuff) makes the owl's flight impressively quiet; and they're not present on other birds, which does help somewhat with identification.

I'd quite like to stop finding carcasses (or evidence of them) though. As well as the owl yesterday (which my working assumption has as being a bird that has flown into something, been stunned, then picked off by a fox - they're just a little too big for the cats - actually Tawnies can be quite dangerous for small cats - and what the cats leave tends to be a bit different); there was an exploded Bullfinch (head left, and plucked feathers all round, very Sparrowhawk-like murder scene); a dead Weasel (on that I think it was dropped from a height by a raptor, possibly even a Tawny or Barn Owl (it was untouched other than a bloodied mouth, with a broken tooth - I think it was picked up, and has fought back in the air and been dropped after it bit the bird - again, for once, unlikely to be a cat because in a fight between the two it's likely both would come away with some horrible injuries - and I'd rather believe the picked-up-a-way-away idea in any event cos a Weasel and chicken house is not a great combination); and then the young Roe Deer that I relocated with a trailcam at the end of last week (which is very Winterwatch, they've got the same thing setup, though with admittedly better cameras).

Nature does remind you, quite often, about how brutal it is. But if a fox got the tawny, at least it had a feed; same for a Sparrowhawk; and whatever picked up the Weasel from the post I put it on; and whatever is captured on the trailcam (if anything) when I fetch it in at the weekend.