My 30-Day Random Owl Watch - Tracking My Favourite Dream Sign

It's all about the owls at the moment.


In a memorable dream, a giant owl/eagle/vulture landed next to me on the edge of a cliff. As we looked out together, I felt at peace, but also on the edge of danger and opportunity. I wouldn't say the huge bird was friendly, but in the dream I knew it had my back.

I woke with a strong feeling about owls being awesome and started noticing them everywhere.
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So with every owl-sighting accompanied with pleasure, amusement, and a sense of deeper meaning, I decided that owls were a thing and I was going to make them even more of a thing.

• I looked at lots of images of owls. 
• I tried to draw some of the owls I found. This was challenging. It focused my attention, though. I imagined that this would help me have more lucid dreams, since it increased my awareness and focus on dreams and waking life.
• I saved an owl as my laptop background image.
• I also made an owl my email background image. 
• I added an owl pendant from a friend to my keychain. 
• I hung a crystal owl (thanks kids) in my writing room. 

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Now I see at least 2 or 3 owls per day: the keychain owl, the writing room owl, and the email owl. And it's not unusual for my morning walk to my caravan to be accompanied by the sound of owls.

But where I think this gets interesting is the random owls.

It's like when you start seeing certain patterns of numbers. You get the number 11 bus at 11:11 and you check your shopping receipt and you paid £11.11. It's coincidental but it starts to feel spooky. And the more you think about it, the more you see it.

In the two weeks before writing this post, I was seeing at least one random owl per day. I had a great conversation recently about owls vs. larks. They are in kids' drawings, games, adverts, online, and on people's clothing.

"I see owls. They're just like regular owls. They don't know they're owls."

All this owl-spotting has prompted me to track it for 30 days, to see if there's a pattern, to see what happens next, and for fun. 

I'm only adding the owls that I didn't plant myself. And I've decided not to get weird about taking photos of every single owl. This is fun and everything, but if I get obsessed about taking photos of dream signs, that's going to make me less connected to my environment, not more. Noticing dream signs is one thing. Pulling out my phone and stopping life traffic is another. 


Here it is.
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December 26th 2019

A couple of weeks ago, I saw that my daughter had an owl on a necklace and I told her that I liked it. Today she was going through a bag of her things and pulled out another owl.

Was getting rid of some school papers from when the kids were very small. Quite a few owls in here.

I was tidying up in the kitchen while the family listened to a Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, which sounded like His Dark Materials. It had Lyra and someone called Pan. And an owl.

Before bed, I listened to an episode of the All Aboard the Dream Train podcast. Jennifer Dumpert talked about sleep and dreams, including circadian rhythms and how she is definitely an owl.

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December 27th

Day two. No owls.

Kind of embarrassing actually.

Starting to think that I've made a mistake starting this and that I'm not going to see any owls for a month.

​December 28th

Two owl sightings today, both logos for content I was researching.

https://www.darkowl.com/dark-owl-vision

and 

https://www.irmi.com/free-resources/white-papers/25-personal-risk-management-tips

Should I have an owl logo?
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​December 29th

Another owl logo online this morning, while searching for something completely unowl-related.

Then, one or two owls hooting as I left my writing room in the evening. I love this. It feels reassuring that they are there, even though I can't see them. I realize that if someone had a phobia of owls, the fact that they can see us but we can't see them would be terrifying. Fortunately, I feel like they are mostly indifferent to us. I just like having them around.

​December 30th

Going through kids' old schoolwork again, since I'm clearing out a bumch* of stuff, and I came across another owl or two. Kids' exercises are full of owls. Not as popular as hens and cows and dogs and cats, but they're up there.

Went in for lunch and the girls were looking at an owl in a sewing and knitting book. They were excited because they have an owl just like it, which our neighbour made. (This is the same neighbour that we were to see the next day, so check out that entry below).

Sending a message to a friend, Facebook suggested that I invite her to join messenger. They are using an owl as their image for this.

After dinner, we watched Guardians of the Galaxy. My wife said she'd mistaken the title for "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole"

On returning to the writing room for something, owls hooted above.

Finally my wife gave me a Natural History Museum diary. I had a flick through and January had a photograph of an owl.
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*This was a typo, but I think it should be a word.

​December 31st

Today started with owls hooting around the writing room, which was a nice way to start the day!

On returning to the kitchen for breakfast, a bunch of the kids' revision books fell on the floor. The brand name/publisher for some of these books is Chouette, which is an owl.

Tidying up the old writing room to turn it into something else, I found a postcard with an owl on it.

Finally, having New Year'sEve, we had dinner with a friend, starting with Coquilles Ssaint Jacques. Being the artistic type, she was thinking of keeping the shells to make them into something. When I asked what, she suggested an owl. She once made an owl out of shells, she said, and when she was a kid there were owls all over her room. 

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January 3rd

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January 4th

Owls hooting this morning and this evening. This is a common occurrence around here. Still feels special though. It's a great sound.

I'll probably keep reporting it, but feel free to dismiss it from the owl count.

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January 5th

Having dinner with some friends when I noticed this beauty!

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January 6th

Watched Bird People today. I despise trailers and there's no clip at the moment, so there's no link here. nothing. Just know that there's an owl in it. And if you've spent any time on my website or you've enjoyed my stories, you'll probably enjoy the movie. I loved it.

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January 7th - Missing day

Stuff happened, of course. I just don't remember an owl having anything to do with it.

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January 8th

Watching the Sorcerer's Apprentice. The one with Nicholas Cage. If you've not seen it, it's a great family film, by which I mean nobody watching falls asleep. It's funny. And I think the magic is Barker-esque as you'll see from the clip. If you can get through the interminable opening narration (just keep your eyes on Monica Bellucci and Alice Krige), you'll probably like this.

8 mins in, there's a stuffed owl in a shop. Owls and magic, eh?

Come for the owls, stay for the evil magicians in a Russian doll.

January 9th

Owl coloured by my friend's daughter.

One of them made an owl noise during our get-together and they discussed a scene with owls in a movie they love. They said they often see owls on their way home.

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January 10th

Was reading a short story about dreams and their site was partnered by Little Owl Creative. (Cute logo).

January 11th

Checked out an app for making animations. Flipaclip. One example was an owl that exploded into birds that flew away.

I also noted the owl on a case of sketching pencils.

January 13th

My daughter lost her handwarmer. Guess who found it?

January 14th

There are no fewer than four owls in Rango. They are the chorus.

January 18th

My daughters recently got into videos about unlikely animal friends. Today, they really wanted to watch the one about the owl and the cat.

January 19th

Downloaded some story-reading apps today, including chat stories. Hooked Chat stories and Tap Chat stories both had owls for their logos. Owls have eyes and stay up late reading fiction I guess.

I also downloaded something called Remente self improvement, which is a goal setting, journal keeping, mood tracking app with an owl on it. Too interesting to uninstall. 

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Conclusion

• Owls are a pretty good dream sign in the sense that I see them or hear them in some fashion everyday. They trigger me to consider lucidity several times per day, which is helpful for attaining lucidity as one of several activities. But I could do better. 
  
• Owls make a cool dream sign. They're beautiful animals. And it's been fun noticing them. But since one of the main points of doing this dream sign experiment was to achieve more lucidity, it probably wasn't the best choice. On looking back at my dream journal over the last couple of months, I haven't dreamt about owls once! I've dreamt about birds a few times; a couple of dreams about gulls.
  
• The initial dream that prompted all this featured a bird that was part owl, but also part eagle, part vulture. It was a bird of prey. So I'm thinking that perhaps I could extend the dream sign to being birds of prey. There are plenty here and that would mean more natural triggers for reality checks. They're also cool. But the best source - perhaps the only source of dream signs - is my dreams.
• What have I actually been dreaming about?
  * Kids
  * Animals that are not owls (bears, wolves, monkeys, dogs, seagulls)
  * People I used to know but am no longer in touch with,
  * Homelessness
  These things might make better dream signs and could be used to inform future stories too, while I'm at it, since this is what preoccupies my sleeping brain.