Owls

Overview

Owls are the hunters of the night sky. They live in barn lofts, hollow trees, ruins, and towers, kill mice and rats by the thousand, and are heard far more often than seen. Most people think them ill-omened; farmers who know better leave a hole in the barn gable for them. Some casters who work at night keep a familiar in owl form, which is a spirit-construct, not an owl.

Appearance

The barn owl, the one most often seen, is about the size of a crow, with a heart-shaped white face like a pale mask, dark eyes, long legs, and a back of honey-gold mottled with grey; from below, in flight, it looks almost white. The tawny wood owl is rounder and browner, streaked like bark, with a round face and large black eyes. The great horned owl of the crags and old forest is as big as a goose, with ear tufts like horns and burning orange eyes.

Owls fly without a sound: their soft-edged feathers make no whistle, and a mouse hears nothing until the talons close. On the ground or a perch they turn their heads almost all the way round. The barn owl shrieks, a long rasping scream; the wood owl hoots and answers its mate in a quavering call; the horned owl booms low. Beneath an owl's roost lie its pellets, grey wads of fur and tiny bones.

Habitat and Range

Owls live wherever there is cover by day and open ground to hunt at night: woods and woodland edges, farmland with old trees, barns and shrine lofts, ruined works, and the upper floors of towers. The ruins of the old works across the Cradle web suit them well, and so do the quiet towers of towns.

Behaviour and Temperament

An owl hunts alone, at dusk and through the night, by hearing as much as sight, quartering a field low or watching from a post. It swallows small prey whole. By day it sleeps hidden, and if it is found, crows and small birds mob it until it moves. Owls are shy of people and keep still rather than flee; a nesting owl, though, will defend its young by striking at a climber's face.

Life Cycle

Owls nest early, in late winter or spring, in hollows, lofts, and ledges, laying three to six white eggs. The young hatch days apart and the smallest often die in a lean year. Fledged owls leave in autumn. A barn owl seldom lives more than a few years in the wild; the great owls live much longer.

Uses and Dangers

Owls give their work: a pair of barn owls keeps a granary freer of mice than any cat. Their feathers are prized for fletching silent arrows. They cost nothing but the odd chick or pigeon, and the fear they cause.

A night courier may keep a familiar in owl form, a spirit-construct rather than a bird, and bring it from hiding with one whisper through Familiar Call before she climbs the tower; the bond must already exist, since the call is recall, not creation.

Lore and Belief

Most peoples take an owl calling by daylight, or perched on a roof, as a sign that someone in the house will die. Others call the owl wise and keep its image over a door against theft, since an owl sees in the dark what thieves would hide. Scholars' houses and record-houses are often said to keep owls in their rafters to guard the parchment against mice, which is mostly true.

Ruin-delvers count an owl roosting in a ruin's high window as a sign the place has no worse tenant, and turn back from one where the owls have left.

Where It Appears

• Conjuration