Coffee Table Book of: Owls (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Owls is a large-format coffee table book about owls, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. Most are portraits of owls in their own surroundings, from Arctic tundra and snowy northern forest to rainforest, desert and savanna.

It opens with the owl up close: a barred owl looking straight back over its shoulder, the heart-shaped face of a barn owl, a snowy owl’s feathered feet on a snow-covered rock, and a short-eared owl’s yellow eye half covered by its third eyelid.

Then the barn owl and its kin, among them a greater sooty owl in the mouth of a tree hollow and a rich orange-rufous Madagascar red owl. Then eagle-owls and fish owls: a Eurasian eagle-owl on a rocky ledge above a mountain valley, a Blakiston’s fish owl on a snowy riverbank beside dark open water, and the bright pink eyelids of a Verreaux’s eagle-owl.

Then the owls of the forest: a tawny owl against an old oak, its mottled plumage matching the bark, a barred owl in a cypress swamp, a crested owl with long white eyebrow plumes, and a northern hawk owl on the tip of a spruce above a snowy forest. Then the small owls: an elf owl looking out of a hole in a saguaro cactus, a grey and a rufous screech owl in one oak, and the tiny long-whiskered owlet.

Then the owls of Africa, Asia and Australasia: a southern white-faced owl with bright orange eyes, a pair of spotted owlets huddled together and a morepork among tree ferns.

Then hunting and display: a great grey owl plunging into deep snow, a little owl with a beetle in its beak, a Eurasian eagle-owl with its white throat puffed out, and a pair of pearl-spotted owlets, one preening the other.

Toward the end, the seasons and the weather: a tawny owl in a beech wood carpeted with bluebells, a short-eared owl among marram grass on a wide autumn shore, a little owl huddled in steady rain, and a great horned owl on an old stick nest with snow on its back.

Short notes run through the book. They are about the owls rather than about the pictures: why a snowy owl’s feet are feathered right to the tips of its toes, which large owl ranges from the Arctic tree line to South America, what the two dark patches on the back of a northern pygmy owl’s head are thought to do, and how a southern white-faced owl makes itself look bigger.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.