Owls of the World: A Photographic Guide

Everyone likes an owl, and it’s easy to understand why. Their big eyes and anthropomorphically austere expressions make them easy to caricature, while their often nocturnal habits and haunting cries make them mysterious and darkly attractive. This charisma is highlighted by their photogenic appearance, and it is fitting that such a huge number of enthralling images illustrate this comprehensive tome, covering all the strigids and tytonids of the world within its covers.

This impressive guide follows most of the recent taxonomic decisions, but presents even most putative splits as full species, for instance splitting African Barred Owlet into five, though even the IOC only divides it into three at present. The plus side of this generous nomenclatural philosophy is that the reader gets at least two photographs of every single ‘splittable’ form known to science (bar the little-understood Amazonian Pygmy Owl, which gets but one), though a few of these like Shelley’s Eagle Owl and Chestnut Owlet are only known from specimens and are pictured accordingly.

The book encompasses much else in addition to its species descriptions, which include summaries of each form’s identification, voice, food, habitat, subspecies and confusion species. Neat, in-a-nutshell descriptions of physiology, with particular relation to owls’ sensitive vision, hearing and silent flight, and the significance of ear tufts, are presented. The asymmetry of many species’ faces is mentioned, although illustrations of this would have been welcome too. Sexual size dimorphism and vocalisations are précised, and age- and morph-related plumage variation discussed in relative depth. Behaviour is also succinctly summarised with regard to aggression, hunting, migratory movements and dispersal, though the group’s evolution, biogeography and taxonomy could have been more expanded upon for my tastes. The cultural presence of owls in human history is also covered, though their conservation is perhaps oversimplified for reasons of space.

The meat of this book was always going to be the images and there are enough high-quality examples among the 739 presented to whet your appetite to rapier sharpness. From well-known jewels like South America’s Spectacled Owl and Central Africa’s Northern White-faced Owl to beguiling obscurities like Spotted Wood Owl, the Merlin-like Red-chested Pygmy Owl or its russet relative Guatemalan Pygmy Owl, your eyes are in for a treat and your birding imagination will experience an indescribable yearning to go and see these truly special hunters.

·      Owls of the World: a Photographic Guide by Heimo Mikkola (Christopher Helm, London, 2012)

·      512 pages, 739 photographs, 250 maps, 11 tables, three illustrations

·      ISBN 9781408130285. Hbk, £35, Birdwatch Bookshop from £26.99