What an Owl Knows, by Jennifer Ackerman

In my mind, this book was stacking up to be a dry treatise on the scientific orders* of owls (Tytonidae, the barn owls, and Strigidae, all the other owls). Case in point, it is subtitled “The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds.” Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good science-y book as much as the next nerd, but I have to be in the right mood to read one, and when this book came up in my To Be Read (TBR) list, I just wasn’t. But I couldn’t slide it back into the bottom of the pile because the bird observatory, where I now sit as a board member, had arranged a Webinar presentation with the author and I was facilitating the afterward Q&A. So, I had no choice but to just put on my science-reading hat and get to it.

Surprisingly, this is the least science-y science book! Ackerman shares amazing personal stories of people who dedicate their time to the study of owls, either as a career or as volunteers. Her stories range from people who have studied owls all of their lives, to people who fell into owling through serendipity, to owls themselves who live in captivity (due to an inability to survive in the wild) and have become ambassadors of learning.

In my favourite story, she introduces us to Marjon Savelsberg, a classically training musician who studied with members of the Johann Strauss Orchestra. When Marjon developed breathing and muscle control problems, and was subsequently diagnosed with Idiopathic Cardiomyopathy, she was forced to abandon her musical dreams. After a period of despondency, she found her way to a research group studying owl vocalizations and has become an expert on Eurasion Eagle Owl, being able to identify individual owls by their particular calls. It is her innate musical talents that makes it possible for her to differentiate even the most subtle differences in owl calls, and has given her a new lease on life.

In another story, owl scientists figured out that they can locate owl roosting and nesting sites by using “detective dogs”, increasing their success rate from 59% to 87%. And in very remote areas, drones are being used to help locate particularly elusive owls. Locating owls helps scientists monitor populations and behaviours.

Ultimately this book was a joy to read and I recommend it to anyone. If you don’t already love owls to death, you surely will after reading it.

It’s late summer in the southern Appalachian Mountains. A narrow trail winds between oaks and hickories tinged yellow and, higher up, through spruces, pines, and firs. No owls in sight, but I know they’re here. These woods are full of them. Barred, Great Horned, Eastern Screech, and now – I realize – Northern Saw-whets.

Owls have changed the way I see this landscape, the snags and felled trees not as debris but as nurseries and ramps for branching owlets, the scrubby gullies not as ecological wastelands but as hide-aways for roosting owls. I think I spot a screech owl nestled in a snag, but it’s only a stubby broken limb doing a credible owl imitation. Ha! Turnabout is fair play.

I stand and listen. It’s daytime. The owls are quiet. They see me but stay unseen, so well hidden t hey escape my eye, even thought they may be yards away.

Writing this book has grown my wonder at these birds. Owls see what we don’t see. Hear what we don’t hear. Invite us to notice sights and sounds that might otherwise go unnoticed. With their quiet, subtle presence and cryptic coloring, they point to the value of not standing out in the world but fitting into it. For owls, invisibility is a defense or a disguise; for us, it’s a privilege, on that – if we’re lucky – my yield an owl sighting.

*as in “Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species”, not as in “One Two Three Four Five …”