Backlit by the hazy gray of a winter sky, it seemed almost too big and too comical to be a real bird, as if someone had hastily glued fistfuls of feathers to a yearling bear, then propped the dazed beast in the tree. Schaller, author of The Deer and the Tiger It’s said that there are two kinds of great storiesa stranger comes to town, and a person goes on a journey. It was clearly an owl, but bigger than any I’d seen, about the size of an eagle but fluffier and more portly, with enormous ear tufts. Owls of the Eastern Ice is a superb narrative devoted to the natural history and conservation of a rare and beautiful species. We were uncertain at first which bird, actually, we’d come across. “This disheveled mass of wood-chip brown regarded us warily with electric-yellow eyes. On a hike in 2000, when he was stationed with the Peace Corps in Russia’s Far East, he “unexpectedly flushed an enormous and panicked bird.” His description of the eventual object of his obsession alerts us that this is no ordinary owl, and Mr. Jonathan Slaght’s first encounter with Blakiston’s fish owl, the rare salmon-eating raptor that would become the focus of his doctoral thesis and this book, was accidental. Jonathan Slaght with a Blakiston’s fish owl. This is a list of the bird species recorded in Spain.
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