Bohemia Village Voice

Baby bengal eagle owl

Jackie Cullen’s owl family has recently acquired a new member. The Bengal eagle-owl chick was born at the beginning of June, and bought from a Tunbridge Wells breeder at just a few days old. This photo was taken when it was just 15 days old. Jackie believes the bird might be female, but says she won’t know for sure until it grows to its full size (4ft wing span for a male, 4ft 6in for a female) and develops adult plumage. The adult bird will be called either Rama, if it’s a male, or Rani, if it’s a female.
In the wild, Bengal eagle owls live on animals ranging in size from small rodents to cobra snakes. But cobras being hard to come by in South-east England, Jackie’s chick is being reared on day-old chicks. ‘They come frozen from the supplier,’ says Jackie, ‘but at this stage she gets through ten a day. She can fit in the palm of my hand at the moment, but give it another couple of weeks and she’ll be three times the size.’
Jackie says she’ll be taking the owl with her everywhere for the first three or four months of its life. ‘By then the chick will have bonded with me for life. Like a human child, every time it’s fed by hand the bond is reinforced.’
Jackie hopes eventually to become a breeder herself. ‘I’ve already got three other Bengal eagle owls, two female and one male. Those three are brother and sisters, so I keep them apart, but the new owl isn’t related, so hopefully in a few years I should be able to breed successfully.’ Jackie is still looking for a new home for herself, the owls and the other animals in her care (see issue 49, July). Any offers can be addressed to her c/o the Village Voice.
Incidentally, readers may not know that the collective noun for a group of owls is a ‘parliament’, a term which presumably arose from the creatures’ fabled wisdom. That being the case, is wisdom what we ought to expect from our politicians, or is that too much to ask?

Jackie Cullen