Country diary: the long-eared owl sees a different world to us

Goyt Valley, Derbyshire: If you are a vole and this magnificent bird has you in its sights, then good luck to youIf you want a lesson in how little you notice about the world, I recommend an hour watching parent long-eared owls gather food for their chicks.Recently I saw the adults detect, pinpoint, catch and return to their brood with five voles in one 20-minute period. Seeing the feat, you could assume that the place was hooching with vole flesh. Not at all. I walked through that vegetation where they were hunting. It was a dense, entangled, knee-high world of heather, bilberry and grass thickets. Had I spent a month on my hands and knees, I may conceivably have found some old sign of where voles had once camped, but I doubt I'd ever have clapped eyes on the mammals themselves. Continue reading...