Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght

Moderately interesting field-work memoir

In 2005, Jonathan Slaght was working on a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. To achieve his degree, he formulated a research project to study the Blakiston’s fish owl. This majestic bird, the largest owl species in the world, lives in the forests of Eastern Asia. Slaght decided to conduct his research in the Russian province of Primorye, along the Pacific coast northeast of Vladivostok. Though an American by birth, through his father’s occupation and some time in the Peace Corps Slaght had previously lived in Primorye, spoke the language, and was familiar with the region’s customs. Over the course of the next few years, Slaght made repeated trips to Primorye to find Blakiston’s fish owls, capture them, and fit them with radio telemetry devices to track their movements, with the end goal of crafting a conservation plan for the fish owl and completing his dissertation. Slaght’s 2020 book Owls of the Eastern Ice is a memoir of his time spent in Primorye conducting this research project.

Owls of the Eastern Ice is basically a 24-page National Geographic article that has been drawn out into a 300-page book. There isn’t enough of interest here to merit such a lengthy treatment. At least half of the book consists of Slaght and his team looking for owls and not finding any. The reader gleans a little bit of a feel for what life is like in this remote portion of Russia, but Slaght doesn’t delve much deeper into the culture than many episodes of drinking in hunting cabins. The most memorable passages of the book involve Slaght and his Russian colleagues escaping some natural threat or obstacle, such as a flood or blizzard.

Other than the fish owls that Slaght is searching for, he doesn’t offer much discussion of the rest of the ecosystem beyond a few mentions of other species spotted here and there. The reader never really gets the feeling of what it’s like to be among these forests. Although this is a book about nature, it’s not really nature writing. A naturalist like Bernd Heinrich might combine concrete bird science with broader Thoreau-like musings, but Slaght’s book is strictly focused on his research. For other zoologists engaged in projects involving the tagging and radio-tracking of animals, this might be a helpful case study in methods and techniques. As an average bird-lover, however, I was disappointed to find that I learned more about capturing fish owls than I did about the birds themselves. This is a perfectly sound volume on an ornithological research project, but I’m not sure why the publisher decided to give this book the full-on trade book treatment and market it to general readers.

I envy Slaght’s adventures: exploring remote wilderness in a foreign land, observing beautiful birds, uncovering previously unknown facts about them, and working to conserve wildlife. His writing, however, while exhibiting the perfectly competent and articulate voice of a scientist, didn’t really generate much excitement in the relating of his travels. This memoir isn’t colorful enough to succeed as a travelogue. The audience most likely to enjoy this book are Slaght’s fellow ornithologists, not for its scientific findings—which would be presented in his dissertation or other academic publication—but for its relatable anecdotes of field work.
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