“How hard could it be?” he writes, as he begins his research. The goal of his project was to search for fish owls, trap them, tag them, then trace their movements to find out the precise nature of the habitat they used, so their breeding and hunting sites could be protected from destruction by logging companies. Owls of the Eastern Ice is a record of Slaght’s four seasons of fieldwork in the remote forests of Primorye, a region of Russia bordering North Korea and the Sea of Japan. Huge, elusive and endangered denizens of the deep forests of Japan, China and the Russian far east, these marvellously odd birds wade through icy water to catch fish, sing in low, hooted duets, possess a thick layer of insulating fat, a wingspan that can top six and a half feet, and have been venerated as gods by the Ainu of Hokkaido.Ī house in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve in Primorsky Kray, Russia. I have become an ardent fan of the largest living species of owl, the Blakiston’s fish owl. But I’m happy to report that this book has changed me.

I once cared for a rescued barn owl, and while it was a beautiful creature, possessing a cat-like hauteur and strangely human face, it was about as rewarding to interact with as a porcelain statuette. There’s something puppet-like about this creature, like a living Jim Henson creation, but it also resembles a beast pulled straight from the pages of a medieval bestiary – which is fitting, because Owls of the Eastern Ice reads like a modern-day grail quest: a tale of one man’s travels through a daunting landscape of snow and ice and radioactive rivers, searching for an animal that seems all ghost.Ī confession: I’ve never understood why so many people are obsessed with owls. Its feathers are shaggy and wet, and from its mouth protrudes the tail end of a silver fish.

Arms crossed, hands deep in a pair of unwieldy leather gauntlets, he holds against his chest a huge owl. Behind him are snowy woods and running water. Pale, bearded, dressed in black, he gazes at the camera with forbidding intensity.

J onathan Slaght has the best author photograph I’ve ever seen.

The owls of the eastern ice