PARTICIPANTS of every pastime or hobby always seem to have their own private language of slang terms - birdwatchers are no exception.

A “tick”, for instance, is a new bird for the area, day or week; a “lifer” is a tick that the individual has never seen before and an LBJ (short for little brown job) is a small and inconspicuous bird that the observer is unable to identify.

One birdwatching term that has almost entered into mainstream vocabulary is “jizz”, possibly originating from the German word gestalt meaning form or shape.

It describes that vague, indefinable quality of a bird - not based on any specific feature, such as feather colour or beak size, but a more general feel-of-a-falcon or thrushy-ness.

I was reminded of the term on a recent bike ride around Wykeham Lakes. My passing presence had disturbed into flight a flock of herring gulls roosting in a stubble field, some of which were one-year-old juveniles.

These young gulls sport an all-over mottled-brown plumage completely different to their silver-grey and white parents. One of them, though, had a very different jizz to the rest. At a distance it was the same size and colour, but somehow more buoyant, less flappy and with fewer sharp edges. It was sort of, well...a bit owley.

I stop pedalling and pulled over to free my hands and raise my binoculars up to my eyes. That initial gut feeling had been correct because I was looking at the unmistakeable image of a short-eared owl, now separated from the gulls and flying alone and low along the field edge.

For the next five or 10 minutes I watched entranced as the owl hunted for voles. It used the classic family technique of flying slowly near to the ground along the rough, tussocky field margin. It’s head was held down at all times, not just to train those piercing yellow-ringed eyes onto the undergrowth, but also to direct its ears in that directional well.

Owls have an incredibly sensitive sense of hearing and locate their prey as much by sound as by their sense of sight.

That famous facial disc is in reality a radar dish designed to direct sound into the birds ears which are located low down towards the front of it head – just two small holes beneath the feathers of the face.

The shorted-eared owl’s name actually has nothing to do with its real ears, but refers to two ornamental tufty feathers on the top of its head.

We do have another “eared” owl in Ryedale, with the not-too-surprising name of long-eared owl, but there is no confusing the two cousins.

Long-eared owls are dense forest dwellers, far more at home in nearby Wykeham Forest than out here in the tree-less Vale of Pickering. What’s more, they are much more your traditional owl and would never be seen dead hunting in broad daylight. Short-eared owls, on the other hand, make a habit of it.

Just as I was about to remount and continue cycling along Ings Lane, my owl re-appeared over the far perimeter of the field and it’s effortless, floating flight began to bring it closer and closer to my vantage point.

At about 20 yards away it suddenly dropped like a stone, feet first and legs extended, into the long grass. Whatever small mammal the bird had been aiming for must have had a narrow escape because the owl took to the air again with empty talons and settled on a adjacent fence post to take stock.

At this point he, or she, finally noticed the nearby human and strange two-wheeled machine, fixed me with a brief, but intense yellow-eyed gaze and took to the air again, sailing away downwind and out of sight.