Flying slowly and silently through the night ... Unlike the snowy owl, the barn owl lives at latitudes where it doesn’t regularly snow. The barn owl’s paradoxically bright plumage baffled ...

the barn owl hunts mostly by flying low over open ground. As it turns out, the raptor’s ghostly plumage is so glaring against the darkness of night that it stuns prey into freezing like a deer ...

I use the words 'fate' and 'destiny' with the same nervous caution I use 'brilliant'. Still, when I saw the barn owl flying low on the Walsham Road, leading me all the way home, I thought it was a ...