\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he air was crisp and the grass still wet with dew when I came upon what looked like a crime scene at my local park. The victim\u2019s entrails were laid out in a neat line: a tiny intact kidney at one end and a small, bloodied mandible at the other, linked by a long string of intestines. Bandicoot remains? No, the fur looked more like possum.<\/p>\n I had found leftovers from the previous night\u2019s dinner, and the diner was one of Australia\u2019s apex predators, the powerful owl. Like some kind of bush bandit, it hunts at night, swooping silently before returning to the treetops to dismember and devour its hapless prey.<\/p>\n <\/span>Possum kidney left by a powerful owl.<\/span> Photograph: Wendy Frew\/The Guardian<\/p>\n On still nights, I often hear its sonorous double hoot. Driving home late I\u2019ve glimpsed it gliding low up my street, weighed down by something heavy caught in its giant talons. Its shadow once passed over me at dusk at the same park where I found the possum remains.<\/p>\n Walking in the bush one day, I noticed telltale whitewash and regurgitated pellets containing fluff and bones \u2013 owl poo and vomit to the layperson \u2013 and looked up into the trees to see the wide-eyed stare of an owlet.<\/p>\n I shouldn\u2019t be surprised to find so many signs of this elusive bird in suburban Sydney, says Dr Holly Parsons, the manager of BirdLife Australia\u2019s urban bird program. The species has been losing habitat in old-growth forests for decades because of land clearing.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the 1990s, it was rare to see them but thanks to our powerful owl project we\u2019ve been able to track this shift from forests to urban spaces in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne,\u201d says Parsons. \u201cThey hold territories year-round and [when they find a partner] they stay put.\u201d<\/p>\n But there\u2019s another quiet killer in these adopted territories, one that threatens the powerful owl population: rat poison.<\/p>\n <\/span> Photograph: Wendy Frew\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Traces of poison used in rat and mice baits have been found in the livers of dead powerful owls. About 60% of birds tested by Birdlife Australia had enough poison to impair their behaviour, and 10% had enough to kill them.<\/p>\n The bird conservation group is especially worried about Second-Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides (SGARs) because while they kill the rats and mice they target, they also kill birds or other animals that eat a poisoned rodent. It wants the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority \u2013 which is due to finish a review of anticoagulant rodenticides next year \u2013 to restrict the sale of these poisons to licensed professionals.<\/p>\n Until then, BirdLife Australia is seeking signatures on a petition to Bunnings, the biggest retailer of SGARs, asking it to stop stocking them.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a critical time because once the decision has been made it could be at least another 10 years before the regulations are reviewed again,\u201d says Parsons.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve checked my shelves \u2013 there\u2019s rat poison there. It will have to go. I\u2019d rather live with the rats than lose the owls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The air was crisp and the grass still wet with dew when I came upon what looked like a crime scene at my local park. The victim\u2019s entrails were laid out in a neat line: a tiny intact kidney at one end and a small, bloodied mandible at the other, linked by a long string<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[2173,13633,13628,12044,13627,13629,1113,9629,13630,7448,1376,13631,2267,13632],"class_list":{"0":"post-22214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-frew","10":"tag-grisly","11":"tag-magnificent","12":"tag-owls","13":"tag-parkland","14":"tag-powerful","15":"tag-predator","16":"tag-remind","17":"tag-scenes","18":"tag-share","19":"tag-suburbia","20":"tag-urban","21":"tag-wendy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}