The Owl Papers

by Jonathan Evan Maslow

Book Overview

Book about nature with lovely Leonard Baskin illustrations. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 052524199X
• ISBN13: 9780525241997
• Release Date: November 1983
• Publisher: Dutton
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Interesting, well-written, and thoroughly entertaining

I acquired this book from a friend after I had told her I was planning to take part in the annual survey of owls in Quebec. The author is Jonathan Evan Maslow, who died in February 2008. He was a journalist and naturalist whose travels took him from the rain forests of Central America to the steppes of Central Asia. This book - which was first published in 1983 - is 183 pages long, is dividedd into four parts, one for each season, and each dealing with a different member or members of the owl family. Each part is subdivided into short chapters which makes this sweetheart of a book so much easier to read, Part 1 - Winter - is an account of the author's search for The Great Horned Owl in a place called Pelham Bay Park, which marks the northern limits of New York City on Long Island Sound. This owl, which the French used to call "Le Grand Duc", is the heaviest and fiercest nocturnal raptor in North America, and the story was so captivating, that I had difficulty putting the book down. Part 2 - Spring - is an account of Maslow's expeditions to search for Barn Owls, Screech Owls and Barred Owls in southern Connecticut. The Barred Owl is the only owl which I have ever met face to face on the two previous owl surveys I have done in the Eastern Townships, and to see one of these perched on a tree looking down at you to check you out from no more that 30 or 40 feet away is a truly wonderful experience even if you are not an avid birder. So this part of the book provided an immediate resonance with my own activities. Part 3 - Spring - is the sad tale of the decline of the Short Eared Owl in Jersey Meadowlands where this particular owl used to nest in large numbers in what used to be a pristine area of marshes and wetlands of New Jersey. Some time in the late 1920s and early 1930s, however, the area was given over to an industrial park which, by the time Maslow visited there, it was little more than an area of deteriorating warehouses, deserted factories, and a dumping ground for garbage, which was so badly polluted that, to quote the author, New Jersey wastelands might be a more appropriate name for it rather than New Jersey wetlands. His search was a somewhat futile one, but in the process of describing his expedition, he goes into considerable detail about the habits of this bird, which unlike other members of the Owl family prefers open land rather than woodland. Part 4 - Autumn - is primarily an account of the author's expedition to the South Station at Cape May in southern New Jersey adjacent to Delaware Bay, in order to take part in the annual fall migration survey along the Atlantic coast flyway. This did, of course, include an array of many different bird species, but it also included the Barn Owl, the Long Eared Owl, and the Saw-whet owl (which is one of the smaller species of owl in Eastern North America.) You didn't know that owls migrated? - well, I didn't either - but they do, but not necessarily in the direct