Event Details

Owls are Janus-faced in their meaning for us. For some societies, they have represented wisdom and knowledge; for others a sense of foreboding, of impending death. The devil bird, thought by some ornithologists to be a species of owl, is one of the enduring enigmas of Sri Lanka’s natural history. For centuries, Sri Lankan villagers have believed in the ulama, a nocturnal bird of deep forests, whose blood-curdling scream foretold death. Colonial commentators and naturalists were fascinated by the legend and sought to explain these eerie and frightening sounds of the night by identifying the creature that made them. The basis of the legend (which varies in the details, as told by different people drawing on accounts in different parts of the island) concerns a man who, to punish his wife, gave her the meat of her murdered child to cook; on discovering the truth, she fled screaming into the jungle and was turned into the ulama. Although many have described the call, no one has actually seen its maker, so its identity remains a mystery—but one that provided much material for ornithological debate as to its source. Ornithologists could not decide however if what they sought to identify was the ulama of folk belief (supposedly an owl), or the source(s) of the manifold eerie and frightening sounds of the jungle at night. Sri Lanka was once densely forested, and most people lived near jungle; extensive deforestation during the colonial period and after means that most people now live far from forests and will never encounter the ulama. Interest in the ulama therefore faded after the sixties. Join Arjun Guneratne (Anthropology) for this analysis and discussion of how folk belief and ornithology intersect to produce a productive, if inconclusive, discourse about birds. All faculty and staff are welcome. Lunch will be provided.