It seems to me that even people who are lukewarm about birds get excited about owls. Whether you associate them with wisdom (thanks to their connection with the goddess Athena), stuffy know-it-all-ness (à la Winnie the Pooh’s pal), or as messengers (everything from Native American folklore to Harry Potter), you have undoubtedly encountered stories about owls in some area of your early life or education. Perhaps it’s their large, all-knowing eyes, or their stillness, or the way they swoop in almost without a sound that causes most people to react to them with a sense of awe.
In What an Owl Knows, Jennifer Ackerman explores the mysteries of owls, from both a biological standpoint–things like adaptations, communication, breeding, and migration–and a human standpoint–how we study owls, why we are fascinated by them, and what we can do to protect them. These are all interesting sub-topics and this book includes lots of great information. I enjoyed learning more about owl pellets–that ability of owls to move the indigestible parts of prey (e.g., bones) up and out of the digestive system (it has a name: antiperistalsis!). Owl hearing is also fascinating: Contrary to what you might assume, those tufts that some owls have that look like ears (plumicorns!) have nothing to do with hearing–they function as camouflage and sometimes display. Most impressively, owls (and other birds) don’t lose their hearing as they age like mammals do. An oversized cochlea gives owls extremely acute hearing to begin with; in addition, studies suggest that they can regenerate the “hair” cells in their ears. For people, hair cells that have been damaged by age or by blasting the bass in the old Dodge Dart don’t regrow, resulting in hearing loss.
Regarding “What can we do to protect them” I’m going to make this really easy and boil it down to one recommendation: For the love of God, STOP using rodenticide. If you do, you’re killing the birds that are the natural predators of the very rodents you are trying to eliminate.
My own best encounter with an owl happened in January 2023, when my husband and I drove to Long Beach, 35 miles south of Los Angeles, to see a wayward snowy owl that happened to be hanging out in a suburban neighborhood. Once we arrived in the area, the owl was astonishingly easy to find, thanks to her many fans who arrived daily with binoculars, spotting scopes, and cameras. Typically denizens of the Arctic, Canada, and the Northern United States, a snowy owl showing up in Southern California was destined to cause a stir among birders.
And yet, snowy owls showing up in odd places isn’t unheard of. Snowy owls breed in the Arctic, where they feast on lemmings as they raise their chicks. In years where lemmings are plentiful, the population of snowy owls also increases. When conditions are just right, a surge in the number of snowy owls (called an irruption) can cause them to venture further south. Ackerman notes, “One of the most memorable recent irruptions took place in the winter of 2011/12, when owls were recorded in every Canadian province and in thirty-one states within the United States. During the irruption two years later, an abundance of young owls flew southward all the way to North Caroline, Florida, and even Bermuda.” While this is unusual, it demonstrates the resourcefulness of these birds. In one study where snowy owls were fitted with transmitters, a researcher was shocked to discover they were flying out to sea (the ocean, you will note, is typically low on lemmings). It turns out the owls were staying close to the edges of the ice near open water patches (called polynyas), which were packed with sea birds like gulls, auks, and eiders. The owls, typically hunters of mammals, were preying and feasting on these waterbirds, another demonstration of adaptability.
I have to admit I’m hard on nature books, What an Owl Knows included. As I said, it’s got some great information, not to mention lots of awesome owl photos, including an 8-page color insert. However, I sometimes feel Jennifer Ackerman dedicates too much ink to the people she’s interviewing for her research. Other readers may enjoy this human element, but I don’t need to hear extensive background on the scientists and researchers studying the owls. Context and qualifications are important, but it feels excessive to me, like she’s padding up her content. To me, there’s a fine line between making a book engaging to people who aren’t experts in a field and overdoing it with anecdotes. I adored Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds, but I got the same feeling of mild disappointment when I read her follow-up, The Bird Way. I like these books, but I wanted to love them.
With that qualification (and acknowledgement that I’m a tough audience), I recommend this book for anyone interested in owls–and who isn’t? What I remember most about my encounter with the snowy owl is the joy. I don’t recall a single person, including the neighborhood residents who were playing host to both bird and admirers, who didn’t have a stupid smile on their face while looking at “Snowy” and snapping photos. For everyone who visited, this drop-in was better than any celebrity sighting. Majesty, wonder, awe, joy: that’s just some of the magic of owls.
Female snowy owl, photographed in Cypress, California, January 16, 2023