Did you know that Charles Darwin had a go at eating owl? While at Cambridge University he was a member of the “Gourmet Club,” which met once a week to eat animals not often found on menus. He found the old brown owl ‘indescribable’. I am thinking that any of us who frequented greasy spoon takeaways in the 1970’s and 1980’s probably consumed animals not normally seen on menus either. Unlike Darwin, we had the luxury of batter and curry sauce to disguise our brown owl. As an erstwhile twitcher I respect the ‘clevericity’ of our winged comrades, like Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh, especially bespectacled and erudite ones like Owl. “You and I have brains,” he says. “The others have fluff.”