What an Owl Knows

A few weeks ago, Neo and I were walking around Max’s Walden on a usual quiet morning. 

Something defying gravity, came down out of nowhere across my head to the other side of the road. We both were startled! Neo growled! 

A beautiful white owl defying gravity came down like a broken branch to catch a chipmunk across the road.  

Everything happened in a split second. I had never seen anything like that in my life and it just left me more humbled by the nature we live in. I felt sorry for the chipmunk and hope he didn't feel any pain. 

Little did I know that there is new book on Owls. 

Review of the new book What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

Like the rest of the natural world, owls are threatened by human action, above all by deforestation and agriculture. Island dwellers are most at risk, like the tiny Siau scops owl, which is on the verge of extinction in the shrinking forests of the Indonesian island of Siau. Even movies can pose a threat: the global popularity of Harry Potter’s pet snowy owl, Hedwig, resulted in thousands of owls being bought then dumped when their owners realised the cost and complexity of looking after them. But there are good outcomes, too. Eight hundred miles off the east coast of Australia, conservationists have brought back from the brink of extinction the Norfolk Island morepork, a beautiful chocolate-brown owl the size of your hand.

At night, where I live in Herefordshire, we often hear a barn owl hooting in a stand of pine trees behind the house. It’s an eerie, mysterious sound that never fails to enchant. And it is this enchantment that is at the core of this charming, deeply researched book. “That owl seemed like a messenger from another time and place, like starlight”, Ackerman writes of an encounter with a female long-eared owl in Montana. “Being near her somehow made me feel smaller in my body and bigger in my soul.”