PD Smith

Owl Sense

18 February 2018 | Guardian, research | Post a comment

I’ve been review­ing Owl Sense, by Miri­am Dar­ling­ton. It’s a won­der­ful account of the author’s fas­ci­na­tion with owls and an attempt to re-wild our imag­i­na­tions with some pri­mal owlish­ness. This bird has fea­tured in our myths and reli­gions from the begin­ning: the Chau­vet cave paint­ings dat­ing back to 36,000 BC, include the old­est depic­tion of an owl, an almost life-size ver­sion of a Long-eared Owl, whose pen­e­trat­ing gaze meets those enter­ing the cave: “the artists under­stood some­thing of the Janus nature of the owl, its trou­bling lim­i­nal sta­tus on the bound­aries of light and dark”.

 

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