The quest to snare—and save—the world’s largest owl
With a wingspan of 5 to 6 feet and a home range in Japan and the Russian Far East, the Blakiston's fish owl is one of the most secretive birds known to conservationists. (Sergey Gafitski/)Excerpted from Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan C. Slaght. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2020 by Jonathan C. Slaght. All rights reserved.The fall traps did not pan out. Either the resident fish owls were not interested in the frozen marine fish we offered as lures or the birds were unwilling to walk under the suspicious netted domes to investigate them. At about two o’clock one morning, a few days after the blizzard ended, Sergey and I sped three kilometers on the snowmobile in response to a beeping trap transmitter, only to discover a false alarm: ice had caused the net to sag and this tugged on the string that activated the...