What you remember about a place is often odd, isn’t it?

Take, for example, Agrotourismo Son Vives in the northern Menorca where Magellan and I stayed five nights.

Our unforgettable memories?

Eating loquats for breakfast every day. Paqui’s lamb, her homemade vegetable lasagna, pumpkin ravioli. Following the call of hoopoes in the fields, hoping to get a photo. Our spacious room. The iconic Menorcan entry gate.

On the afternoon we arrived, Tomeu, a member of the family who lives on the property, called us over to his place. He’d noticed our cameras and wondered if we were interested in birds. “Come in and see my photos of scops from last spring,” he beckoned.

After telling us about Eurasian Scops-Owls In what felt oddly overly generous, Tomeu gave us one of his photos of them.

We’d never heard of the Scops-Owl. But a few weeks ago when I emailed Javier Méndez Chavero, who had guided on a bird finding mission earlier that week, he replied that they’re the most common owl on Menorca.

A Scops-owl weighs no more than a small pear, 135 grams, but its wingspan can stretch to 64 cm, the length of my arm.

The word Scops comes from the Ancient Greek skōps, “little eared owl.” Some say the name goes even further back to Pre-Greek folk etymology, to sképtomai, “to examine.”  The Scops is described at ebird as a

Very small owl with golden-yellow eyes. Cryptic and well-camouflaged, with streaky gray-brown plumage that blends in perfectly with tree bark. Small ear tufts raised when alert. Much more easily detected at night, when monotonously repeated and well-carrying song, a single plaintive hoot, is given.

You can listen to its call, which sounds a bit like a single heartbeat in delay mode.

Reading my diary of our time at Son Vives, I see how often I wrote about Magellan being wakened in the night by the sound of an owl. I see my words of worry—we’d just gotten the news that my cousin Lynn (our daughter is named after her and Magellan’s mother Glynn) had had a freak accident, was paralyzed, in ICU in a halo, her family called to her bedside.

I think I know why I kept writing about the owl’s nightly presence.

Subliminally, it was my adopted patronus with the magic to ensure Lynn would survive, unincapacitated. (I’ve since read that having a Scops-owl for your patronus “means that you find comfort in being one of a kind.”)

Now here we are, eighteen months later. Lynn’s doctors call her a rock star. Other than an imperceptible limp and nerve pain in her arms, she has thoroughly recovered.

While believing in magic isn’t my thing, noticing peculiarities and patterns is.

See the owl in the first word of this blog’s title, Acknowledging?

P.S. Uncanny, preternatural is this addendum.

My cousin Lynn called to tell me that after she read this story, she remembered something.

After her accident when her son Scott and his wife Marie came to visit her, they stopped at the hospital giftshop to let their four-year-old daughter Lail pick out something for Grandma Lynn. Lail, looking around, said, “I think this will be really special,” and chose a stuffed toy—Ollie the Owl. Ollie currently resides on Lynn’s pillow.

Navigation

“Eurasian Scops-Owl.” ebird.org.

“Eurasian Scops-Owl.” iNaturalist.org.

Lattanze, Danielle. “Otus Scops.” Animal Diversity Web.

Son Vives Agritourism Hotel in Menorca website.

Son Vives Facebook Page.

Son Vives Instagram.