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Whatsapp The powerful owl is among Australia's largest raptors.

The appearance of a rare powerful owl at the Crusoe Reservoir and No. 7 Park in central Victoria has caused quite a flap amongst bird watchers. Ann Jones meets the intrepid ranger who is now trying to play matchmaker for one of Australia’s most fearsome birds of prey.

Miles Geldard tells me he is near the pinnacle of his career, and if he could just find this owl girlfriend, he’d already be there.

Setting up a mating pair of the apex predators would be enough for him to retire a proud and happy man.

Geldard is the Park Ranger for the Crusoe Reservoir and No. 7 Park in central Victoria, a patch of bushland once cordoned off for water storage, now a public park.

Its head is relatively small, but you wouldn’t call it a ‘pin head’ to its face. It could tear your arm off, or at least do a fair it of damage with its enormous talons.

The solitary owl at the centre of this story is a juvenile powerful owl , one of Australia’s largest predators.

It isn’t like the owls you’ve seen in the Harry Potter movies—it doesn’t have a flat, heart-shaped face like a barn owl. Rather, it is a hawk owl, and looks like a cross between the two forms of bird.

Its head is relatively small, but you wouldn’t call it a pin head to its face. It could tear your arm off, or at least do a fair bit of damage with its enormous talons.

If it stretches its wings, they’d measure 1.4 metres from tip to tip, and that’s scary enough, even without the accusatory glare the owl permanently wears, even when at rest.

The owl is listed as ‘threatened’ in Victoria and ‘stable’ nationally. However, even where it’s not listed as a threatened species it’s elusive and uncommon.

Bird watchers throughout the eastern states keep a keen eye on breeding pairs, taking note of how many chicks are produced and tracking where the fledglings end up.

Which brings us to Crusoe Reservoir, Geldard and the twitching bush telegraph.

‘Someone came up to me and said they’d spoken with someone at a garage sale who’d said that they’d seen a powerful owl at the Crusoe Res, then I bumped into a fella, and he said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen the owl, I’ll show you where it is,” and he took me up there and there it was,’ says Geldard.

‘I was very excited, because a raptor, like, a primary hunter to be in an area means that all the other parts below it are all in place [and] it can support an owl like this.’

In fact, Geldard has been trying to create the perfect environment for the powerful owls through a nest box program, attempting to lure a fledging to the area.

Read more: The majesty of wedge-tailed eagles

A nest box for a 55 centimetre-long owl is a large contraption; they would otherwise nest in the hollows of centuries-old trees.

In fact, where there are suitable hollows available, the owl will often ignore the box.

What is interesting about Geldard’s scheme to attract in a nesting pair is that up to 33 other nesting boxes for prey species were also put up.

‘Our theory is that the owl would take up residence in the box and we would be providing it with its food source, all the possums and stuff that would inhabit the other boxes,’ says Geldard.

However, this young owl has not found a mate as yet, and may still be setting up its range.

Geldard has mapped the local area’s owl pairs, which are generally spaced about 10 kilometres apart, and by his calculations the spacing is perfect for the owl to set up a permanent roost in the park.

However, as we troop through the box-ironbark forest looking for the owl, it proves enigmatic.

Even experienced bird watchers can walk right past the bird because of its excellent camouflage, which from below looks like light and dark chevrons, which blend perfectly with foliage.

You won’t hear the owls calling either (unless you’re out in the evening during mating season) as they are largely silent, even when flying.

They use that ability to silently hunt prey such as brushtail possums, seagulls and even birds as large and intelligent as ravens.

It’s gruesome stuff—the owl will often rip off the head of its prey and consume that immediately, before carrying the limp body back to a roost.

The owl will larder what’s left, taking a nap while holding the beheaded body in one talon and the branch in the other. It’s a bit like putting your left over takeaway in the fridge for later.

‘A pair need about 300 possums a year to survive, nearly one every day, so they’re pretty good at controlling possum numbers in certain areas,’ says Geldard.

Listen: Sounds of a wild night in the forest

In fact, in the dry drought years when the possum population shrunk in country areas and remained relatively stable in cities, the powerful owl’s population also drifted into suburban areas.

Philip Maher, a birdwatcher with 30 years of experience, drove all the way from Deniliquin to see if he could spot the young owl at Crusoe Reservoir.

‘They’re not so easy to find out in the bush anymore, you’re more inclined to find ‘em around city parks and stuff nowadays,’ says Maher.

The owls seem to be remarkably tolerant of human presence as long as they’re not interfered with, however, it is a fine line and each individual owl has different threshold.

‘I’m trying to avoid the “loving to death” factor,’ says Geldard.

‘Part of the thing of finding a rare animal—it just brings the crowds ... [and that] can impact on the survival on some of these rare animals and I don’t know if a photo of a noticeboard down the front is enough for people to go “wow that’s great” or do they need to see it?’

‘Because when people see this owl, I’ve been here, it is transformative for them, they do get a real kick out of it.’

‘But you have to find a nice balance between that and disturbing the owl to the point that it moves on and perhaps finds habitat that it’s not as suited to and doesn’t survive as healthily as it would here.’

If the adolescent owl chooses to remain in the park, it is likely to be a healthy range, with a mixture of forest and urban areas to hunt within.

The powerful owl and the twitching bush telegraph Listen to the full episode of Off Track to find out more.

Moreover, the owl’s presence alone indicates a certain amount of health in the park. It also provides a slightly disgusting barometer for biodiversity—slightly disgusting because the barometer is owl vomit, or pellets.

‘They’ll consume the parts of the animal they are eating that give them energy and sustenance. The heavy parts that don’t—such as the teeth, bones and fur—they’ll produce this nice little package called a pellet,’ says Geldard.

‘What you can do is split those apart and identify what the owl has been eating for lunch.’

‘A couple of years ago we found a pellet at the No. 7 Reservoir, which is up the other end of the park, and it was a large pellet, so it was from either a barking owl or a powerful owl. In it was a brushtailed phascogale’s jawbone.’

‘We haven’t recorded those in the park previously, so we did get that species ticked off on the list and started putting up some habitat for it also. So without actually seeing the animal alive and running around, w e knew it was here.’

‘Getting an owl here really is the pinnacle of what I’ve been working on here for two and a half years. What would be the bee’s knees is get the breeding resident pair here. That would be the endgame, I suppose for me, I could retire happy then,’ says Geldard.

Never has so much hope been placed on a teenage powerful owl’s entre to the dating world.

Head outside and venture Off Track for a show about the great outdoors. Listen to the environment discussed by the people who live in and love it.



