Owls of the Eastern Ice

"It’s your second home, Jon. You’ll be back."

Who knew a book about owl conservation in Russia could be so engaging? Books like these are why I love dipping into obscure topics – you never know what you’ll find or how interesting small details can be.

This is a book about fish owls in Russia being studied by a guy from Minnesota. Jon Slaught picks these elusive, very rare birds as the focus of his graduate work, and we go along with him on his expeditions into Russia to find, study, catch, and release them. Along the way, we get a lot of insight into far eastern Russian culture, introspective thoughts about conservation in general, and an informative final few chapters where we learn what comes from his research and the devastating impact a typhoon from 2016 has on the region.

This is almost part memoir, in that we get a lot of Jon’s thoughts along the way about his expedition companions, the locations he frequents, the colorful cast of Russian characters he meets along the way, and all sorts of other little bits along the way. There’s plenty here about the fish owls of course, but I also loved learning new things about a country I know not enough about. The struggles he goes through in getting tracking data from the owls he identifies was especially interesting to me, about not wanting to stress the birds out unnecessarily, and wanting to make sure eggs and nest aren’t harmed while doing so. It’s very clear to me that he cares deeply about the owls and the region, and I really appreciated that while reading.

Great book about an obscure topic in a country most people probably don’t know much about.