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| Long Eared Owl |
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| Short Eared Owl |
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| Tawny Owl |
Well today at work I was asked a question that threw me a bit.
Now, when folk find out I have an interest in birds I will sometimes get asked about a strange bird they have seen, or about the birds they get in their garden. Usually the strange bird is a Rock Pipit, rather than a Jay. For some reason, nobody asks me about birds that turn out to be Jays (well, all apart from my pal, Garry, whose description didn't make it too easy to ID but we got there in the end), but about a small brown bird and then they send me the photo and it turns out to be another Rock Pipit. Now when I first saw a Rock Pipit (2 on the seawall at Riverside Drive in Dundee about 10 years ago, opposite Tesco - where I've never seen one since), I didn't know what it was either, so I can't blame any non-birder for not knowing what one is.
However, today the initial question had me wondering if I had heard the question properly.
I had.
"Is an owl a bird?".
"Yes, what did you think it was?"
Now the asker of the question was a young girl in her late teens, and the person who answered her wasn't me, but a girl of a similar age who was equally perplexed by the question as I was. To set the scene a little better, Girl number 1 had asked me what I planned to do on my day off, to which I replied that I would be doing a bit of birding. At that point I noticed that her pal was wearing a large picture of an Eagle Owl (I think) on her top. How I had failed to notice this all day, I have no idea. Anyway, I mentioned the owl, to which girl 1 asked the question that threw me. "Is an owl a bird?"
Girl 2 then proceeded to answer "Yes, what did you think it was?" and then to explain about owl pellets as a wee interesting snippet to which girl 1 replied with a "yuck!". Follow on questions were "Is a Penguin a bird?", "Is a Duck a bird?", "Where do Robins go in summer?" and "Why don't you see birds on holiday?". Some clarification was requested on the last one, just in case she meant birds sunning themselves on loungers by swimming pools with little sunglasses on, but she meant that she never saw any birds when she was abroad on holiday. There was also "Do you shoot the birds?"
I've read a few things that suggest a lot of younger folk are growing up with little knowledge of, or interest in, the natural world but this was the first time I had experienced such a lack of very basic knowledge first-hand. I have no idea what is being taught in school now (or in the past 10-15 years) but it is rather worrying that someone in their late teens could possibly not know that an owl/duck/penguin was a bird. Whether her teachers had ever talked about birds I have no idea, or whether they had and she just didn't pay attention that day, again I have no idea.
It turned out girl 2's dad is a birder and a volunteer at the RSPB Loch of Kinnordy reserve near Kirriemuir, and we had a wee chat about birds and Kinnordy and a few folk I know from up that way. She said she wants to see a White Tailed Eagle, so I suggested a couple of likely spots for her, and we explained just how big and impressive a WTE is to girl number 1.
The difference in knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject between the two of them was night and day. It would be nice if there were more like girl 2 than girl 1 around looking out for the natural world, in more ways than one, but I have a feeling that sadly the opposite is probably nearer the truth.
Something needs to change somewhere, I think.