What the Owls Taught Us: Part Two
- Glen Sealy
- May 15
- 5 min read
May 2026
If you haven't read Part One, start there. It's the part where everything is wonderful.
This is the part where it gets harder.
Not because the afternoon with Matthew at Jambs Owls became anything other than extraordinary, it didn't, and the wonder never left the room. But because when you spend time with someone who knows these birds as deeply as Matthew does, you cannot leave with only the beautiful parts. The knowledge comes whole. And some of it is difficult to carry.
Start with the roads.
A Barn Owl weighs between 270 and 360 grams. A Tawny Owl, like the one watching us from across the room that afternoon, reaches around 660 grams at most. These are not heavy birds. And this matters because roads are one of the leading causes of owl mortality in the UK, and not simply because owls fly into the path of vehicles.
The physics of it is worse than that. A car travelling fast enough creates a downdraft in its wake. An owl hunting low along a roadside verge, the precise habitat Barn Owls favour, can be pulled into the path of oncoming traffic by the displaced air of a vehicle that never touched it. There is no warning. There is nothing the bird can do. At 270 grams, in a downdraft, it simply goes where the air takes it.
Matthew described this quietly, matter-of-factly, the way people describe things they have had to make peace with. It is heartbreaking, he agreed, when we said so. Yes. It is.
Then there are the windows.
Most people know that birds fly into glass. What most people don't know is why Tawny Owls in particular are so vulnerable to it, and the reason turns out to be one of the stranger things we learned that afternoon.
Tawny Owls, unlike most birds, produce very little oil on their feathers. The coating that makes other species' plumage water-resistant and smooth is largely absent. The result is that Tawny feathers accumulate dust and fine particles, and this gives them a static charge. When a Tawny Owl flies toward a window, that static charge attracts it toward the glass in the final moments of approach, pulling it in when it might otherwise have veered away. The evidence is visible afterwards: a ghost print on the glass, the dust from the feathers pressed into the surface in the shape of a bird.
Windows are getting larger. We build them bigger because we want light, because we want to look out, because we are drawn to the outside world even as we spend more and more of our lives indoors. Matthew said this without judgment, just observation. The consequence is that more glass exists in the landscape than ever before, and birds are hitting it more often and more frequently as a result.
There are things that help. Decals and window films that break up the reflection. External blinds. Placing feeders and perches away from large glass surfaces. None of it solves the problem entirely, but all of it reduces the risk. Awareness, as always, is the first step.
And then there is the poison that nobody sees.
Secondary poisoning from rodenticides is a quiet catastrophe for owls. A Barn Owl family can consume thousands of rodents in a single season, this is part of what makes them so ecologically valuable, providing natural pest control that benefits farmers and landowners across the country. But when those rodents have consumed anticoagulant poisons, the owls that eat them absorb those same compounds. It accumulates. It kills, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, and often without any obvious connection being made between the poison laid down and the owl found dead weeks later.
The solution exists and is straightforward: natural pest control works, and owls are part of it. A farm with a healthy owl population needs fewer rodenticides. The two things are not in competition; they are, properly understood, the same thing. But changing behaviour takes time, and in the meantime, the poison continues to move up the food chain.
Owls are, as Matthew explained, indicator species. Their presence in a landscape tells you something reliable about the health of that landscape. Clean water, adequate prey, suitable nesting habitat, and low chemical contamination - where owls thrive, these things are present. Where owls disappear, something has gone wrong, often several things at once.
This is why the work of sanctuaries like Jambs Owls matters beyond the immediate care of the birds in the room. Education changes behaviour. Behaviour changes landscapes. Matthew spoke about this with the straightforward conviction of someone who has believed it for a long time and seen enough evidence to keep believing it. Every person who leaves understanding something they didn't understand when they arrived is a small shift in the right direction.
Zulu, who hatched at 25 grams and now fills a perch with easy confidence. Nutmeg, pale and precise, the unmistakable British Barn Owl doing what Barn Owls do. Spectre, dark and calm and entirely unbothered by being extraordinary. These birds are not just beautiful. They are, in Matthew's hands, arguments. Evidence that attention and care produce something worth having.
Genetic testing is changing what we know about owls faster than at any previous point in history. The reclassification Matthew described, species separated, subspecies elevated, family trees redrawn based on blood rather than appearance, is producing a more accurate map of owl diversity, and with it a clearer picture of which populations need targeted protection. What looks like one species managed as a whole may turn out to be several distinct populations, each requiring its own conservation strategy. The science is moving quickly. The conservation needs to move with it.
Nest box programmes work. Habitat corridors work. Reducing rodenticide use works. These are not speculative interventions; they are documented, evidenced, and in many cases already producing results. The UK Barn Owl has moved from the Amber conservation list to the Green list in recent years, a genuine marker of improved status that reflects decades of targeted effort. It is possible to turn things around. It has been done.
We left Jambs Owls that afternoon carrying more than we arrived with. More knowledge, certainly. More affection for birds, we thought we already understood. But also more weight, the specific, named weight of knowing what roads and windows and invisible poison are doing to creatures that have been here, in various forms, for tens of millions of years.
Matthew carries that weight every day, alongside the feeding schedules, the health checks, the education sessions, and the quiet, ongoing business of keeping 22 species in good enough condition to keep on making their arguments to whoever walks through the door.
We are glad we walked through the door.
We hope you'll visit.
Jambs Owls can be found at Hall Place and Gardens, Bexleyheath. Open Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays, plus Wednesdays and Thursdays during school holidays. Adults £4, children £3. No booking required.
Our thanks to Matthew at Jambs Owls for his time, his knowledge, and his extraordinary care for these birds. We wish his family well.
April 2026.
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