The Little Owl

 

. A small red alarm clock informed me that it was already 4:30 a.m. and time to set off for the forest. The night was unusually warm for mid-October. A crescent moon cast a faint light on the forest floor, rustling with withered leaves. It was an hour and a half's walk to the Kosy Most forest range in the northern part of the Białowieża Forest. I decided to arrive before dawn, hoping to spot the bison whose fresh tracks I had seen on the Narewka River the previous day. Hiking in near-complete darkness, I was wondering which direction to approach the herd from without being noticed, when the tracks of an old forest railway, dating back to World War I, loomed in the distance. From the intersection of the track and the narrow-gauge railway, the bridge was only a short walk of about fifteen minutes. I slowed down, trying to walk as quietly as possible, when a loud crack of breaking branches reached me from my left. I stopped, trying to guess whose hooves were pressing into the soft forest soil. After a moment, the crackling sound repeated a little closer to the road, 10 or 15 meters from where I'd stopped. Silence. We looked at each other, but I couldn't see anything, and the animal had me on the gravel road like a frying pan. I decided to continue, having given up hope that the owner of the hooves would come out of the thicket and introduce himself. Approaching my destination, I wondered: was it a bison, or a deer, watching me from the depths of the darkness, or perhaps some exceptionally large boar had made such a racket? The animal's behavior and the location of the encounter pointed more towards a bison, which, with over three hundred bulls, cows, and young bison, reign supreme over the Białowieża forest. When I finally reached Kosy Most, the eastern sky began to fade slightly, illuminating the marshy meadows where the bushy willows perched like witches. The silence is ringing in my ears; no bird, no other animal, not even the wind dares disturb this magical moment when night gives way to day. I stand frozen, waiting for dawn, wondering what sound will open the morning concert in the meadows, when a loud crunching sound reaches me from my left. I know that sound well. A beaver is gnawing the bark off a twig. These enormous rodents, growing to thirty kilograms, have their lair here. On both sides of the river, the characteristically cut trunks of alders and oaks, paths crushed by their heavy tails, and piles of cut branches remind me that beavers have taken possession of this patch of forest.

As I strained my eyes to spot the feasting beaver, the sounds of snapping twigs could be heard from the nearby oak grove. At that same moment, a wild boar trotted out of the oak grove, crackling with deadwood, onto the narrow path. The black animal, weighing about 120 kilograms, turned the wheel, huffed, and that was all that was visible. News of the intruder must have immediately reached the herd, which, grunting, slowly retreated into the depths of the old forest. The day was increasingly taking possession of the world. The shadows were shortening, gradually dissolving into a pale glow. I set off toward a vast, wild meadow that had hosted at least a few bison yesterday. I stopped at the edge of the willow thickets. Familiar images began to flash through the glasses of my old East German Zeiss with its exceptionally clear lenses. The morning mist suffused the ribbon of the Narewka River, a patch of reeds, clumps of sedges, and a high, jagged wall of mixed forest. Empty, no sign of bison. A jay squawked warningly from a clump of willows, and a startled flock of long-tailed tits rose from an ancient hornbeam. These small, graceful birds resemble cotton balls, to which Mother Nature has attached thin, long tails and miniature beaks. Goldcrests call to each other in the crown of an old spruce. These smallest European birds weigh significantly less than a box of matches. By comparison, a white-tailed eagle can grow up to 6 kilograms, and its wingspan is over two and a half meters.

Suddenly, from behind me, I hear a low, two-syllable whistle. At first, my memory fails me; I have no idea what animal is announcing its arrival. As my gaze wandered toward the source of the sonorous sound, I spotted the distinctive silhouette of an owl in the crown of a dead alder tree. Calling this bird an owl evokes associations with something at least medium-sized. This, however, is a dwarf owl, a true dwarf of the owl family. This agile predator, a terror of tits, goldcrests, and other small birds, is barely larger than a sparrow.

The owl perched motionless on a thin branch, and I gazed at it, captivated. I had long dreamed of meeting this beautiful and unique bird, much easier to hear than to see in the dense forest. My joy was short-lived, however. A tawny owl hooted from a nearby old-growth stand. Before the last phrase of the song had faded, the pygmy owl glided toward the nearest undergrowth, avoiding its ten-times-larger cousin.

In Poland, the pygmy owl is a true rarity for birdwatchers. There are no more than 250-300 pairs in the entire country, most of which inhabit mountainous regions. My friend Artur Domaszewicz, who has devoted many years to studying this delicate owl, estimates that the Białowieża Forest is currently inhabited by no more than 25-30 pairs of these diminutive owls, most of which inhabit the Białowieża National Park, also known as the Strict Nature Reserve. This distribution of pygmy owls within the forest is certainly not accidental. It is in the Reserve that they find their favorite habitats – old, healthy, moist forests with a large proportion of spruce. In recent years, due to the cutting down of old-growth trees and the drastic drop in groundwater levels, the proportion of old, moist forests in the forest has significantly decreased. If we don't stop the forest from drying out and the oldest trees from being cut down, birds, especially the pygmy owl, eagle owl, and eagles, will gradually become extinct.

The pygmy owl stands out among Polish owls not only for its small size but also for its preference for diurnal activity. At night, this delicate owl has even poorer vision than humans, forcing it to hunt during the day. However, pygmy owls prefer to hunt at dawn and dusk. Their most common prey are common forest birds such as tits, finches, robins, and small rodents, especially the bank vole. This type of lighting seems to suit the owls best, as it resembles the nights this species has encountered for hundreds of generations in the taiga, their original habitat. Its small size and preference for daytime hunting are not the only distinctive features of this species. When threatened, a pygmy owl won't abandon its chicks, as even an eagle owl fifty times its weight would. Caught in a nest, which is usually a cavity carved by a woodpecker, it clings to the nest and attempts to deter the intruder by snapping its small, hooked beak. In most owls, chicks hatch at intervals of one to several days. This causes significant size differences between siblings and creates intense competition between them. In years when food is scarce, and this situation in nature is more the rule than the exception, smaller and weaker birds often die in unequal competition for food with their larger siblings. In pygmy owl families, all chicks hatch and leave the cavity almost simultaneously, and—another exception among owls—they are adept fliers from the start.

The Białowieża Forest isn't the only area where the pygmy owl occurs in Podlasie. Quite close, just a few kilometers from the provincial capital, Białystok, in the Knyszyn forests, in spring and autumn, you can hear the distinctive, flute-like, two-syllable whistle with which the male pygmy owl "marks" his 1-2 square kilometer territory. Hearing this melodic call, it's worth stopping for a moment and looking around, giving yourself the chance to get to know this miniature predator better.