Woodland Whispers

As night falls over Scotland's forests, the soft call of the tawny owl echoes through the trees – a timeless voice in a changing landscape

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THESE are the blackest nights and this is the owl hour.

The owl in question is the tawny owl, and the tawny owl is a thinking owl.

The woodland is small but oaken at its heart, and its core oaks are big, broad and beautiful in any light, any season. Nearby there are beeches that are bigger and broader still. All this is to the tawny owl's liking.

In winter daylight the woodland whispers. The loudest voice is wind ruffling the oaks' stubbornest leaves. In January they are crinkled and brittle and wear the brown shades of cold tea. They crumble at the touch of a finger, but they cling on and on and on, and I for one have no idea how or why.

Bird voices are faint and high and furtively thirled to the canopy - a restless flock of assorted tits and finches, nuthatches and treecreepers.

Not even a passing jackdaw musters anything worth listening to. In that way, and only in that way, the wood intimidates. Hush, it says. Keep your voices down.

Daylight comes to the wood late in the day and leaves early. The light fades to nothing. The moon still has an hour or two of climbing up the blind side of the planet before it begins to filter through the branches.

Meanwhile, there is a lull. All life embraces it “and all the air a solemn stillness holds”.

Then, “Whoo- ooh!”

It reverberates faintly but clearly from the far edge of the wood, where birches thicken the lowest slopes and nudge down among the alders and willows of the riverbank. The owl call inhabits that distance that lends enchantment. Then there is nothing.