Bad Finnish Birdwatcher

Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - Eagle Owl

Late this evening I was walking towards home. I live in the city center. Not far from home I hear a howl. Hoo! After a few more steps the message reaches my brain. My feet stop and my head starts to spin. Hoo! Now if that sound isn't coming from an Eagle Owl... And there he sits, high above the roofs on top of a relay tower its belly turned red from the warning light of the tower. Hoo! For a while I stand there in the street corner watching and listening to the low Hoo!'s the large black figure outlined against the ugly brown sky regularly makes. Then I head home, Hoo!'s still keep coming from behind. There's an almost full moon in the sky dying the surrounding clouds silvery.

This is a fairly new thing, Eagle Owls living in the middle of the city in Helsinki. They've been coming to the city to spend the winter months for as long as I can remember, there's lots of food here even in mid-winter. But now for a few years they've been actually living (and apparently also nesting) in the city year-round. Several males have been found keeping territories. The most famous of them Bubi, named after a sports commentator. He's been living on the olympic stadium and became an international celebrity after a Finland - Belgium football game he visited. Finland won. Don't take my word for it, go check YouTube, there's clips of the incident. So the territorial calls coming from church towers and roof tops aren't anything unusual really. But a first for me so close to home.

As I got closer to home I realised I can actually see the tower from my staircase window. So I opened the staircase window and with the cool evening air there flowed a low Hoo! inside. I got my scope from my flat and took a look at that red dot on top of the tower in 30x magnification. He was still sitting there. Now there would have been a nice gothic church tower with gargoyles and all for it to sit on, but it had chosen this modern thing of the cell phone era. Not criticism, I just felt the church tower would have been a pretty cool setting. After a few more Hoo!'s he spread his huge wings and glided somewhere into the night.