Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght
(Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2020)
Blakiston’s fish owls are huge, the “size of a fire hydrant” according to researcher Jon Slaght. Living in Russia’s Far East, Siberian Tiger habitat, the birds are rare and seldom-seen. They are best located in winter, when they are drawn to open stretches of river, from which they nab small fish, the bulk of their diet.
None of this would seem to be promising for a Ph.D. project: Russia, rare, winter. Yet, Slaght was interested in research with consequence, “something with broad conservation impact.” The owls, though undisturbed right now, would not remain so. Maybe work that revealed their basic biology and ecological requirements could be used to save it in the future.
Owls of the Eastern Ice describes Slaght’s five year stint in the Far East. He recounts the rigorous, snowy conditions of that region’s winter. He describes the details of winter field research: how to find the birds, how to capture them, how to identify them, how to devise Plan B for gathering data when Plan A clearly is inadequate. He details his less-than-luxurious living conditions, sometimes a tent, sometimes a rough cabin, one winter, a Soviet military truck called a GADZ-66. He’s helped by Russian researchers, eccentric locals, and not a few shots of vodka.
There’s something for every reader in Owls. It is a true, vivid narrative of field research. It is a compelling account of a wild place, sure to intrigue would-be travelers. And it is a sympathetic, yet humorous story of the quirky individuals that choose to live under extreme conditions.
Jonathan Slaght, now a grant manager with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Russia program, lives in Minneapolis. He took his doctorate at the University of Minnesota and trained at the Raptor Center in how to handle a captured bird, using Great Horned Owls. A signed copy of the book can be gotten from the Museum of Russian Art in south Minneapolis, or wherever books are sold. For more information, see his Web site: jonathanslaght.com.
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