What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds

by Jennifer Ackerman

But the notion of one nonhuman animal species working to protect another strikes me as both moving and illuminating.

there are two important days in life, the day you were born and the day you find out why.

The vocal courtship antics of Barred Owls during the nighttime hours in some suburban neighborhoods can be so full-throated and maniacal they banish sleep.

the “grotesque love-making” of Barred Owls as “ludicrous in the extreme. Perched in rather low branches…they nodded and bowed with half-spread wings and wobbled and twisted their heads from side to side, meanwhile uttering the most weird and uncouth sounds imaginable.”

“A pair of Barred Owls were calling back and forth,” he says. “Then, suddenly, I saw them flying in tandem over the ice, swerving together, lit by the moon. It was magic.”

“They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.”

This is so important to realize. Wild animals and birds are not pets for us to cuddle. They are mysterious beings that could teach us if we would learn from them.