Owls

by John Sparks, Tony Soper, Robert Gillmor (Illustrator)

This attractive study surveys in vividly readable style living species of owls in the world today, covering anatomy, evolution and every aspect of behaviour. Owls extraordinary sensory abilities are fully explored and their long relationship with man investigated in an accessible and popular natural history.

Genres: Nature, Birds, Animals

236 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[Isavarg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dated, considering the date of publication, but it highlights the weakness of modern natural history publishing and in that today's publishing for general readership focuses too much on photographs and not facts. Look for a book on owls which isn't a scientific work where you pay in excess of £ 40 or more and all you would get is a wannabe nature celebratory diary or photo collection. Because of its age, it would be nice to have an updated version of the book to see what problems exist now for certain owl species and which ones have been resolved.

I would have given it five stars if it wasn't for its age and because there is a mistake in the number of rodent species mentioned - there are currently 1500 known species of rodent (give or take the odd recent discovery or extinction and not the 3000 it states in the book! I think we would have noticed if in the past 40 odd years or so since its publication if we had lost 1500 species of rodent and for the curious, there are currently around 4000 species of known mammals, with about a quarter of them being bat species. But be aware that the number is changing slightly due to advances in molecular ecology research that are uncovering new species all the time, but there still wouldn't be the extra 1500 species of rodents that this book suggests!)

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/4 stars

[Arlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. Really well researched and informative but written with a really quirky dry sense of humour. Lovely photos and drawings too. Great read.

[M Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated this book's conversational writing style which made it, though densely packed with information, readable. I learned a lot and enjoyed it. The author's tone and narration made it a pleasant natural history read.

[Gauri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting, and I learned a bunch about owls, which caused me to research them more. Kind of dry at parts, but ok.

[Book Guy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's alright. Some of the measurements they use were confusing, like using candles to measure luminescence. But the drawings were really good and I enjoyed the bird facts.