Country Diary: Flushing out barn owls with an explosive sneeze

Memories of our favourite open-fronted barn in Bedfordshire are forever tarnished by our final visit. Before that, we always made a point of pausing in the doorway and checking no one was home before entering. On its concrete floor, there was a regular smattering of pellets – solid evidence that owls had been roosting in the rafters, though I never saw one there. On that last day, we walked in chattering and forgot to stop. We had barely crossed the threshold when a reproachful spirit flew at us and over our heads. Our daytime thoughtlessness had stolen a part of a barn owl's night. And I confess that I gained a guilty thrill from the intimate encounter that this careless transgression had given us.

I felt an echo of that experience after I sneezed in a Somerset churchyard. Ninety minutes after sunrise, we had walked around an established mown path to the back of a squat church tower, talking in low, muted voices. Just beneath the sloping, slate-tiled roof was a narrow window – like a castle arrow slit. We had both glanced up and noticed a tangle of sticks poking out from the base. Somebody had nested there – maybe a pair of jackdaws? It was then that I couldn't help giving an explosive sneeze.

A light arrow spilled out of the slot, opened its wings and took flight over the graves. Barn owls don't make nests with sticks; this bird must have taken over the crow's nest as a winter roost, and I believe my involuntary exclamation had shaken it out.

Very light-coloured birds – swans, egrets, barn owls – may give an illusion of deliberate, leisurely wingbeats, but this owl was in a fast flap. It was quickly apparent, however, that it was not so much escaping from but flying to a particular spot. Once in the open, it knew exactly where it was going, taking a direct route over the graveyard wall and up into a high hedge at the far side of the next field. It wrapped itself in invisibility, this light sleeper, clearly ready to put snoozing plan B into operation.