T 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’s 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.

I had found leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, and the diner was one of Australia’s 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.

View image in fullscreen Possum kidney left by a powerful owl. Photograph: Wendy Frew/The Guardian

On still nights, I often hear its sonorous double hoot. Driving home late I’ve

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