For a quarter of a century Tony Angell observed the different pairs of western screech owls that nested in a box he’d nailed to a tree outside his bedroom window, but The House of Owls (Yale UP) is more than just a record of watching owls in a family setting. Angell is an artist, birder, and naturalist; The House of Owls is the apotheosis of a life-time’s engagement with owls. Steeped in the tradition of Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon, it blends taxonomy, ornithology, biogeography and autobiography illustrated with seventy-five ink drawings of owls in their natural habitat, and reinforced with range maps from The Birds of North America project at Cornell Lab. of Ornithology.

Angell’s interest in depicting owls as “an attractive and engaging species that deserved our interest and attention” was sparked by “intense exchanges over the fate of the birds” with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). Attracted by the twin challenges of conservation and capturing on paper an elusive bird that hides in plain sight, he learned that an “emphasis on aesthetics rather than debate […] contributed to a climate where emotions settled down and a reasoned discussion ensued”. As an artist/naturalist “motivated to shape my subject to a degree that does justice to their emotional state”, Angell has since enjoyed a long and distinguished career responding creatively to the symbiotic relationship of birds and humans. For example, he illustrated and co-authored, with scientist John Marzluff,  Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans, a groundbreaking investigation into bird behaviour based on innovative research into corvid brain activity (published in paperback in the UK in May 2015.) Through close observation, Angell believes “owls are inquisitive, playful, wrathful, determined, and even contemplative”, and through his meticulous drawings he attempts to communicate the “owlness that sets these birds apart from other avian species”.

You can read the full review in the Times Literary Supplement (12 August 2015)

Tony Angell’s website