Warmest greetings Anna,
I mentioned some letters back that another hedge witch, Tamsin Sorenson, now occupies the crofter cottage that the Estate traditionally gives to a botanical healer, as The Stewards refer to them. And I believe I noted the odd thing is that she attracts owls, lots of owls, with the woods around the cottage full in the day with them sleeping. Now owls are not terribly common in Scotland, which makes it even odder.
Perhaps the most familiar owl near her home, the tan and white Barn Owl, will often hunt during the daytime and can be seen flying low over our fields and near the hedges looking for its next meal — usually a mouse or vole. I once saw a red fox run fast beneath a barn owl and pounce on the mouse before she could grab it. I swear the owl looked huffy!
My favourite, I think, is the Tawny Owl, which the size of a pigeon with a rounded body and head and a ring of dark feathers around its face surrounding the dark eyes. It is one of the species that both mates for life and it fiercely territorial. There’s at least four pairs within a hundred yards of her cottage — an unusual concentration to say the least!
Tamsin has created lots of nest boxes for the aptly named, brown coloured Small Owl, which is just now starting to show up on the Estate. (Our Steward thinks she brought three or four mated pairs with her.) Despite its small size, it’s been seen by several folk here to be hunting young rabbits! Indeed it’s been observed that they’ll take over an abandoned rabbit borrow as a nesting site.
I had a leisurely tea with her one afternoon a few weeks ago and I raised the question of why so many owls were now nesting here. (Tamsin is herself very bird like with a slight build, short-cut feathery hair, deep green eyes, and she cocks her head like an owl. I’d guess she’s in her late forties or early fifties.) She paused a minute or two to think the question over and then she laughed rather quietly. She then gestured to a nook in the wall I hadn’t noticed where there was a statue of Blodeuwedd. Tamsin said ‘her name means ‘Flower-Face’ — two names for the same goddess. At first she is the beautiful spring maiden, ‘Flowers’, but at the end of her rather tragic story she is transformed into an owl so she is re-named ‘Flower-Face’. And what better goddess for a hedge witch who is herself bird-like?’
So one mystery is (sort of) solved by her answer only to compounded by my feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, Tamsin herself is far more than a mere hedge witch.
Affectionately, Gus
