Poured Over: Jennifer Ackerman on What an Owl Knows

By Jenna Seery / June 22, 2023 at 6:00 am

“I found in nature that kind of the same appeal that I find in books which is: … they’re both filled with these rich particularities and they’re also … mysteriously universal.”

Jennifer Ackerman’s What an Owl Knows is a compelling and vivid investigation into one of our world’s most beloved and mysterious animals. Ackerman talks with us about her journey to the world of birds, the incredible researchers she worked with on the book, the roles nature plays in daily life and more with guest host Jenna Seery. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Madyson and Mary.  

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Jenna Seery and mixed by Harry Liang.   

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.        

Featured Books (Episode):
What an Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman
The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman
An Immense World by Ed Yong
Sounds Wild and Broken by David Haskell
Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght
A Most Remarkable Creature by Jonathan Meiburg

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America by Matt Kracht

Full Episode Transcript:

Jenna Seery
I’m Jenna Seery, a bookseller and associate producer of Poured Over. And today I am joined by Jennifer Ackerman, the incredible author of many books about birds, you probably remember The Genius of Birds or The Bird Way, which was a B&N Best of 2020 for nature and wildlife. But today, we will be talking about What An Owl Knows. This book truly changed my perspective on birds, maybe in general, I learned so much from just this one book. I can’t believe it. So Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us today.

Jennifer Ackerman
What a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Jenna.

JS
I love this book. I think there’s so much value in sort of this dissection of one species, there’s so much from the start to finish of how these birds exist in our society and the impact they have. But I’d really love to start with talking about how you came to birds and how this all this journey started for you.

JA
Yeah, so gosh, I’ve loved birds, really since I was a kid and I went bird watching with my father when I was seven or eight years old. And we would go down along the CNO canal in Washington, DC. And we go, you know, before dawn, and we go out and listen to the, to the birds sing, the thing is, I was one of five girls in my family. My dad was a really busy guy and if you wanted to spend time alone with him, bird watching was a great way. And he had learned to birdwatch when he was a boy scout. And he’d learned from a man who was really almost blind, but he had a wonderful ear. So my dad learned about birdsong very, very early in his life, and he really passed that along to me. And so you know, from the age of seven or eight, I’ve just been, I’ve been a bird lover all my life. You know, it was only later when I got interested as a science writer really in birds and bird behavior and bird brains and what, you know, what’s, what makes birds tick? How do they communicate, you know, how do they learn their songs serve a whole slew of questions came to me as a, as a science writer. So that really launched me into birds.

I think people anyone who knows me is going to be very confused by me doing this interview, because I have to say, I have a bit of a fear of birds. Maybe that’s just living in New York and being around pigeons, which seem to have no fear or regard for human life. But this I have to say this book started to change my mind, which I didn’t think was truly possible on birds, I learned so much about the beauty of these creatures and how they are so important to our ecosystem. I guess the next question I would have would be why owl specifically? How did you end up on this particular topic?

Yes. Well, so I do love birds, you know, all birds really, owls, you know, they’re just so unique in the bird world. For one thing, you know, most of them are nocturnal. They’re these night hunters. And they have such like, beautiful, eerily quiet flight and these really extraordinary senses that allow them to navigate the night and to hunt in the night. And I had a few early experiences with owls. I put up an owl box behind my kitchen window, and I would, I was lucky enough to get an eastern screech owl roosting in that box, and just his little head would show out of the little circle in the box, during the day, and then at night, it would vanish. Sometimes in the morning, I would find like, oh, the wing of a bird hanging out of the box partway, you know, and this owl would, I would see the wing sort of twitch twitch and then it would be pulled into the box by the owl. So anyway, I just got really fascinated. And I started to think about writing a book about owls, you know, my head just began to sizzle with questions because, like, what makes an owl an owl? And how did these birds get to be the way they are? You know, why are they so different from other birds? Why are they active at night? You know, they have this reputation for being wise, but really, how smart are they? How intelligent and I really wanted to explore these questions and find out what we actually know about owls. As it turns out, we know quite a lot. You know, we’ve been studying them for a very long time. But it’s really only lately that there have been the kind of advances some of the technological breakthroughs that really have allowed us to solve some of the mysteries that have been around for centuries, and that made it a very good time to write the book.

I could not believe how many kinds of owls there were, just that sheer fact alone, just constantly hearing about more and more variations was honestly shocking to me in a way, because you just don’t think that there’s that much diversity.

Yeah, there is incredible diversity. You know, there are 260 species of owls. They’re all over the world. They live on every continent except Antarctica. They live in every kind of habitat, you know, from deserts, to ice packs from boreal forests to grasslands. And they range tremendously in size, you go from something like the Blakiston’s Fish Owl, which is a very rare owl and it’s as big as a fire hydrant, you know, it’s huge. And it’s this really kind of silly looking bird with these tousled little ear tufts and a funny little way of kind of swaggering when it walks all the way down in size to the elf owl, which is this little, tiny nugget of a bird about the size of pine cone, you know, and they also are incredibly diverse in their behavior. So you have some owls that are active only at night, some that are active in the dawn and the dusk, the crepuscular hours, and then some that are really mainly active in the daytime. So there’s just a tremendous range.

I love any book that’s going to send me on a Google deep dive rabbit hole and this book absolutely did my search history recently is just types of owls because as I was reading it, I just couldn’t stop. The Blakiston’s fish owl might be my new favorite thing. There’s so they look so grumpy all the time. And there’s just all these pictures of them being held by people looking just so truly disgruntled and confused. I love it.

They are really amazing birds, and I had the incredible good fortune to see one years and years ago when I was in Hokkaido, I was doing a story for National Geographic on winter wildlife. And at the time, this was like 20 years ago, I really had no idea what I was seeing. I mean, these birds are so rare, and they’re so magnificent. And I was with a scientist who studies them Sumio Yamamoto, and he’s worked very hard to conserve these birds because there are so few of them left. But I saw the bird from a distance in a tree and I mean it, it looked enormous. I couldn’t believe it; that it was a bird. You know, it’s just, it’s a magnificent creature truly, and the Japanese have such reverence for it.

It’s one of those things that I was like, I can’t believe I’ve gone so long without knowing about these. But now I’m just obsessed, I can’t. And hearing the conservation efforts around these, some of these more rare birds was so interesting, the researchers who are out there doing this work across so many different fields. It’s incredible the amount of commitment and dedication that these people have for these species, for their habitats. What was it like to get to work with these researchers and these people who are so passionate?

Well, you know, it’s my favorite thing in all the world, it’s why I do this work, I just love getting out in the field with somebody who’s completely obsessed with their bird. And I have to say, owl people are in a special category of their own. I mean, they are truly crazy and obsessed, and, you know, wonderfully dedicated, I went out in the field with really some of the best allied experts in the world. And it was absolutely incredible to see them at work and to see the way how comfortable they are with these birds. These are some of the hardest birds in the world to study. And they’re very shy, you know, they’re most of them are active at night, it’s very hard to access some of their field sites. So you have to be really dedicated and, you know, motivated and rigorous to get out there and do the kind of work that they do. And it was it was so inspiring, you know, some of them go out, you know, all night long. And they’re listening for our calls, they’re trying to locate pairs, and in some cases, trying to trap these birds and so that they can band them or measure them. And they’re very difficult to trap, to get either they’re so wary, they’re so shy. So you have to be very clever and very skilled, you know, in order to do the kind of work that they do and it’s just, I just found it incredibly inspiring and also just daunting.

Truly, the one that struck me the most was all of the researchers who are working with that the owl calls, and there’s like a former musician who tracks these birds and can identify them just by the sounds they make. And some of these researchers almost seem to speak directly to the birds. It was so incredible to imagine being so immersed with these creatures that you can actually make calls and responses with them. I was blown away.

Yeah, that is an amazing thing. And, you know, one of the most surprising things I think I found in the book was that the that the vocalizations of owl’s are so complex, there’s just teeming with meaning, you know, we used to think that a hoot was just a hoot. But owls have all different kinds of hoots, they have, they also squawk, they chitter and all of these different kinds of vocalizations. And one species that that was studied the great horned owl, there are 15 different types of vocalizations. And you know, there’s six kinds of hoots and five kinds of chitters, and each of them is used in a specific context with a specific meaning. And I too, was just absolutely bowled over by the way, these scientists who study vocalization have really made themselves experts on my language. And you mentioned, the musician Marjan saddles, Berg is Dutch, she studied as a classical musician. And she has used her very, very skilled ear to identify individual owls by their calls. And this is what scientists have learned is that owls have like a signature call just, you know, a very distinctive voice that identifies them. And they use they can recognize each other by voice. So they, they use it to identify mates and allies and strangers, but humans can, if they can identify individual birds in the wild, they can tell two things. First of all, it’s really helpful with conservation, it’s a great tool, because you can actually start to count birds once you recognize them as individuals much more accurately. And also it gives them it gives you a window into their very complicated social lives. And to like, figure out who’s mating with whom, and it turns out, you know, we thought that that owls were these monogamous creatures faithful to their mates? Well, it turns out, there’s, there’s a lot of hanky panky going on, it’s a real soap opera out there. And these scientists are able to tune into this and to see, you know, whose swapping mates with whom, when and why, just because of this capacity to, to recognize voices.

I was very impressed with sort of the level of commitment that all of these researchers have to something that, you know, I imagine most people are like, oh, owls, you know, it’s birds. That’s great. But in these ecosystems that they inhabit, they’re the super predators. They’re these like, super important pieces of so many ecosystems. And they’re, I was amazed by how often they were like, well, there’s 30 of these birds that we know of, and these researchers know, all 30 of these birds, and it’s mind blowing that it’s that small, in some cases,

There are a lot of, especially islands species, you know, they get down to very low numbers. And, you know, the great conservation efforts going into these birds really, owls everywhere, are threatened by habitat loss and climate change. So these are really important efforts. And I think one of the very cool aspects of this is that there are huge numbers of citizen scientists, people who are volunteering to do some of this really important conservation work and they’re, you know, these are like heart surgeons and nurses who work in the ER, and all kinds of people. And they are volunteering their time and their effort, sometimes working all night long to trap owls and band them and to try to contribute to this effort to understand the numbers of owls, you know, where what habitats they’re using, and, and also how they’re moving, you know, owls migrate. And we didn’t know very much about that until we got these, some of these really big networks in place that are, for the most part, run by volunteers, these people who are just giving their time because they love owls.

And I love that, I love that sort of community aspect of it. It’s so great to hear about and to imagine, as daunting as I’m sure all that is for the researchers, is it daunting for you to sit down with all of the this massive amounts of research, I’m sure you’ve compiled and be like, Okay, now I need to turn it into the book. How does it go from here are all my notes, here are all the things I’ve compile and now I have to write it?

Yeah, it’s the most exciting thing and it’s also yes, very daunting. And so it takes, so I usually spend a year or two in the field and reading, interviewing, doing research for the book, and then it’s another year or two of writing, editing, you know, draft after draft after draft. And sometimes the amount of material really just is overwhelming and the chapters kind of balloon but editing the you know, the extraneous out, sculpting, crafting the narrative. That’s really a joyful experience for me, I love the storytelling aspect of it and focusing on that and I like to imagine that I’m writing a letter to an interested friend you know, then that really just helps me sort out kind of what’s essential to the story. What’s interesting, and what I can just leave on the cutting room floor.

The commentary aspect, along with the facts really makes it go so much more smoothly. I never it never feels like homework. It never feels like you’re reading a textbook. It’s just, I think a letter to a friend is like a great way to describe it because it just feels so conversational and so easy to digest, unlike an owl pellet.

Well, thank you very much.

If you don’t know about owl pellets, you’ve gotta read the book, I guess.

So, an owl pellet is all the indigestible parts of its prey. And it is really a marvel how this works, you know, the owls eat their prey, whole sometimes. And, you know, they end up with all the claws and the fur and the beaks and all kinds of stuff that they can’t digest. And it’s all of that is pressed in their stomachs and then they eject it up through their esophagus. And it’s really quite an remarkable process. It’s something that the pterosaurs could do in the dinosaur age also. But it’s one of the ways that scientists find owls is really by tracking down their pellets. They’re all over the forest floor if you could, if you find them and you’ve got a bunch around a tree you can look up and be pretty sure that there’s an owl roosting in that tree.

In the grand scheme of birds these feel truly like one step from dinosaurs so often with so many of their like really distinct traits. It’s crazy to imagine that these birds are similar to like songbirds because they seem so drastically different.

They really do you know, all birds are dinosaurs, you know, they all arose from these small running predatory dinosaurs. But they all took different branches of in in evolution. I think it’s just fascinating that that owls, you know, they seized on a niche that was occupied after the big dinosaurs died off and small mammals began to explore different niches including like shrews and opossums that were became night mammals and owls adapted, you know, and they developed these incredible sensory powers, quiet flight, things that allowed them to operate it at night and take advantage of this new nocturnal feast.

They really have enchanted me clearly from the way I have grown from reading this book. But they’ve enchanted humans from cave drawings through now I was, I couldn’t believe that we have found pictures of owls in cave drawings that seems and that they’re, like, recognizably distinct owls.

There’s the oldest, one of the oldest known images of a bird is this painting in the in the Chauvet cave of southeastern France, and it’s 36,000 years old. And it is clearly an owl, I think it’s either a Eurasian eagle owl, or a long-eared owl. And so, you know, we humans have been obsessed with, with owls, literally 10s of 1000s of years, we’ve been shoulder to shoulder with them for, you know, most of our evolution and development. And so, you know, it’s really interesting to me that they, they are kind of lodged in the human imagination and just a very pronounced way, that’s not necessarily true of other kinds of birds.

They represent so many different things, as I was reading through the ways that different cultures, view them every time something else would come up and be like, of course, I’ve heard that, yes, I’ve recognized but then there are things in other cultures that are so you know, in some cultures, they’re omens of good luck, and some there omens of bad luck and they there’s symbols of death or witchcraft, but then also, they’re also symbols of wisdom and prophecy, they really run the gamut of every possible connection.

Absolutely. And, you know, it’s, it’s really interesting to me, I’ve been sort of trying to parse what is it about owls, that they carry such powerful symbolic value? And I think it’s really a combination of things that makes these birds so potent as symbols, you know, we see part of is that we see ourselves in them, you know, they have these round heads and big forward-facing eyes. And, you know, some species are just kind of cute, they’re baby-like, you know, but they’re also so different from us. You know, they’re these creatures of the night. They’re really fierce hunters. They’re just mysterious and kind of uncanny. So I think it’s this whole package of owls as you know, familiar and strange, and sometimes cute, sometimes brutal, that makes them so kind of exciting and also troubling in a way.

They really have fit in so many different pieces of mythology and pieces of superstition. And the way that they’re, they’ve intertwined with so many different cultures of, you know, they’ve, they’re seen as symbols of death in so many different societies. And then at the same time, in so many other societies, they’re revered. And there are these good luck symbols. And it’s so interesting that this specific type of bird which even though they can look so varied, from the different species, has managed to sort of constantly flow through these different cultures, these different societies. It’s it, I couldn’t, I wasn’t prepared to read all those things. I think I was like, this is truly something I never thought about.

Yeah, it’s really really interesting. They’re in our myths, our stories, our art and artifacts, they’re there, they’re everywhere. And one of the things that that interested me was, well, so why are they so closely linked with death, you know, they’re in some societies, and it’s not really hard to understand how, you know, the catching a barn owl out of the corner of your eye, this ghostly white bird with its the strange kind of funeral night cries, and their habit of like haunting vacant buildings and cemeteries and, and things that that might give rise to the notion of some kind of like bird like incarnation of a demon, or a spirit being of some kind. So, you know, there’s that. And there’s also an interesting idea that owls are linked with death because of our own circadian rhythms. So a lot of times, cardiac events, like stroke, heart attack, those kinds of things, they occur in the very, very early morning hours. And that’s, you know, around three or 4am. And it’s kind of when our body is at an ebb and a way, and our levels of adrenaline are low, and all those kinds of things. And, you know, it’s also the time that, you know, if you if you’re awake and going outside, you’re gonna see owl. So there is this link between them that’s that, I think is pretty interesting. And I was also fascinated with just the way they appear in artwork across the ages, from the Egyptians all the way to some contemporary, beautiful, contemporary sculptures. One of my favorites is one by Teresa White, who has a sculpture of a snowy owl on the back of a lemming. And it’s really meant to represent the epic understanding of the interrelationship of creatures in the natural world. And their kind of spirit being I just want to mention that there are photographs and illustrations in the book, but it’s, it’s the first time I’ve ever done that. And it was really fun to find good pictures of some of the artwork of owl and some of the great photographs to include.

That definitely was I only have a galley here, I can’t wait to get my hands on the finished one. Because even just the pictures in the galley are so they add so much, because every time I was like, I gotta Google what that will look like, because that’s how I read books. But then I would turn the page and there would be the owl, and it would be okay. Yeah, yeah, it really adds so much. I think the thing that gets that really struck me in the way we understand our wills in our society, and our culture is just this constant curiosity about nature, and how even as society constantly grows and changes, and unfortunately, we are experiencing so much habitat loss for these creatures, there are still so many people who have this curiosity and this love for these creatures and for nature in general, and how important that is to maintain.

Yes, I think that’s absolutely right. You know, and, and I think especially during the pandemic that people really did turn to nature for as a source of comfort. And that has always been true for me, I remember I really started after my mother died, I was 21 and I found a place a little mountain and had a path that went up to this absolutely beautiful view of a meander in a river. And there was just something about that place about being really deep in nature, you know, there was pine needle smell everywhere and rotting logs and you know, moss covered rocks and all the birds and everything and I just found so much comfort in this idea of living things going about their lives in a very regular way. You know, they were so resilient, so persistent. And so in some ways I you know, I think I found a nature that kind of the same appeal that I find in books which is: It’s deeply engrossing, both are deeply engrossing, they’re both filled with these rich particularities and they’re also, I don’t know, mysteriously universal and they offer perspective.

It’s so easy now to feel disconnected, I think from the world as a whole at a time where we are at our once our most global that we’ve ever been, it’s so easy to be isolated in our day to day lives. And especially for things like an owl that, you know, I live in New York City, I may never really encounter very many wild owls outside of the fair few in Central Park, but it’s so different to be able to access that and to really understand not only just the conservation efforts or the new research, but just the way that something like a species of bird can connect culture across.

it does make you feel connected and in both to the birds themselves and to people across the globe. And you know, I have found that everywhere I go, for one thing, there’s there are owl things, there is owl merchandise everywhere, you know, there were owl beers and owl wine and you know, owl backpacks, and they’re really a thing and cultures everywhere. You know, the only place you don’t see those kinds of items, and they don’t see it in the artwork is where people associate owls with bad luck and death and so they don’t they don’t want them on their backpacks.

Yeah, it’s so interesting, like you said, during the pandemic, I mean, I have so many friends that were like, I’m into birding now. This is my new thing. I’m into birds, and they go out and it really gave them that opportunity to connect. And I think that that’s such an important thing to have that renewed sense of nature. Whenever I go back to Minnesota, now I’m, that’s where I’m originally from. And I really have such a different respect for the nature than I had growing up. Because when you sort of grow up around it, sometimes you’re like, Oh, this is just what everywhere is like, but now there’s an owl center in Minnesota that I’m determined to visit, I’m trying to regain that respect for the nature.

Yeah, it is. It’s really something I remember, during the pandemic, a friend of mine had a barred owl family living in the woods behind her. And that’s how we spent time together, we take walks, you know, wandering around looking for the nest list, listening for the barred owl, and we heard the owls but we never actually saw them. These birds are so elusive and difficult to spot, but it was the hunt it was you know, just the company and the possibility of seeing this magical creature that really, really kept us going.

It is one of those like, pure basic human things, that desire to understand the world around us. And especially now when there’s so many scientific advancements I couldn’t believe reading in the book, sort of the ways that they’re using technology now to understand these birds in a different way. That now it seems like we’re like on the precipice, especially with all these conservation efforts really to understand so much more. And not just for owls, but for animal species across the across the map.

This is really true. I mean, we have so many new technologies, you know, I think about nest cams and webcams that are teaching us what’s going on at a nest or camera traps in the wilderness that are taking pictures of animals at night and in you know, in remote areas. So we’re learning things from that technology that that about the kind of intimate interactions between creatures that are birds that are nasty, or I think about like satellite telemetry, the ability to put a satellite tracking device on a bird to figure out where it’s going. And, and we can do that now with a big bird like a snowy owl. And, you know, there are infrared cameras, there’s machine learning that’s helping us with the vocalizations, there’s just so much great new technology. And you know, a lot of— our researchers will tell you that there’s nothing like going out in the field, getting your boots dirty, and really, you know, doing it the old fashioned way. And that is also just absolutely essential. Those people are doing these long term studies that take tremendous dedication and take being out in the field where the hours are, and we can’t, we can’t learn without those kinds of people.

And having hopefully, you know, in the sort of, in the wake of this renewed interest, hopefully we have a new crop of people coming up that are ready to take on those responsibilities. Like you were saying, even the sort of crowdsourcing that’s happening of whether it’s people coming in on their off time or people watching I remember so many people watching like live stream webcams have different nests and reporting back to researchers because they’re able to be there all the time. There’s always someone online and so all of that stuff is so cool, sort of encouraging and hopeful for these research teams going forward.

Absolutely. That’s a great point. And a lot of these webcams, you know, people are watching all the time, and they’re documenting behaviors, and then you’ve got it on film. So they can, you know, say, you know, I think, at such and such an hour this happened, and the scientists can go back and look, and sure enough, you know, there have been some really incredible breakthroughs that way. So, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s fantastic.

What a way to build community through all of this and just have that connection of, you know, we all love these owls, I think, especially a sort of a group of animals that doesn’t always necessarily get the same recognition. We hear, you know, a lot of Save the turtles and save the polar bears, which absolutely, we want to save all of the animals, but I couldn’t believe how many different species of ours I had never realized we’re so close to extinction, and that you just don’t hear about it. Because we are a little desensitized, I think to hearing about here’s another species that’s this close to extinction.

It’s really unfortunate, I think you can get desensitized or numb to this. But, you know, one of my what I hope will be a kind of takeaway from people for people from the book is how many owls are threatened by habitat destruction and climate change, and, and how important it is to really try to work to make sure that our, our children and our children’s children get to see the owls that we see, and to learn from them. Because, you know, we’re still very much in and learning mode. And they have such marvelous and mysterious ways of being. So we have, you know, a long way to go. I think what we all really crave, especially now is, is kind of a sense of aliveness and wonder and awe. And I do think that owls offer that and, you know, they enchant us. And they remind us that we’re part of something bigger. And we want to have them around for a very long time. So we all need to lean in and recognize they need support and support them in whatever ways we can.

Absolutely. This sort of segues into what I wanted to talk about next, which is it Who are you hoping finds this book? If they’re walking into a bookstore and maybe this is not their, you know, normal thing, but if they encounter this book, what are you really looking for people to take away from this.

I’m hoping that somebody walks into the bookstore is going to look at this little northern saw whet owl on the cover and say, Oh, my goodness, this owl is looking like straight at me, it has something to tell me and it does, you know, just I want them to see ours with just a new curiosity and awe. And also, after the reading the book to think of owls as these really subtle ingenious, idiosyncratic and, you know, just utterly fascinating creatures, and, and also maybe to question whether owls might be showing us ways, different ways of knowing and being in the world different kinds of intelligence, and to just care more about their survival.

I love that. I think all of those things and more will be so apparent to people when they read this book, as you were writing and as you’re researching, was there something that really surprised you something that you’re like, I can’t believe that this is the way it is.

Yeah, the vocalizations certainly did. But then there’s a little bird called the burrowing owl, which actually burrows it nests in the burrows of other animals like prairie dogs, armadillos, woodchucks. But the really cool thing about these birds that just blew me away was that they decorate their burrows. And they decorate them with all kinds of things. They decorate them with dung, you know, cattle dung and coyote scat. They decorate them with little pieces of fabric and corn stalks. And the males, they do this after the female has already laid her eggs and she’s in the burrow. So it’s not about attracting a female. But the male does all this gathers all this stuff random sometimes like pieces of concrete. I mean, you just can’t believe what they bring in. They just lay out around the mouth of the burrow. These males are doing it to say this place is mine. So nobody come anywhere near it. It’s a flag to other members of the species that that home is taken. And that this guy is tough. You know that he can collect all this stuff and if you want to be tough in the burrowing owl world decorate.

I think the thing that got me the most because so often we talk about owls is like these majestic creatures and then they’re like, but they also play they have fun and they just mess around sometimes and like they’ll play with each other or they’ll play with a cat or they’ll play with things on the ground. I was like I love that.

That surprised me too. There was a barn owl that that played, clearly was playing with a cat there was nothing predator prey about the relation If at all, they were just having a good time together, and it’s true in the, in the animal world at large, you know, in my last book I wrote about play in birds and all kinds of birds play. And it’s such a sign of intelligence and, you know, and also being feeling safe and comfortable in their habitat. So it’s a, it’s really a beautiful phenomenon. And I once ran across a group of vultures down the road from me, and they were pushing a yellow soccer ball for no apparent reason, but it was just the most fun to watch. I

t’s really, it’s truly softened me to birds, reading this book, because I used to be like, I don’t want them near me. I don’t want to know about them and they freak me out. But I’m coming around, I’m softening.

You are my audience.

Because I’m a bookseller. I also have to ask as you’re writing and as you’re reading sort of, who are your author inspirations? Or who do you look to sort of get you going in this in this vein?

Yeah. Well, my original inspiration was Rachel Carson, when I wrote my first book, Birds by the Shore, I read Rachel Carson just avidly and she has such a lyrical style and beautiful way of storytelling. So she was my really my original inspiration. But there’s so many great writers now who I really admire. I love Ed Yong’s work, An Immense World was just a real favorite of mine. David Haskell’s Sounds Wild and Broken, just a brilliant book. As far as birds go, Jonathan Slaght’s Owls of the Eastern Ice is about the Blakiston’s fish owl and it’s just a magnificent piece of storytelling about his research on the those owls. And another one is Jonathan Meiburg’s A Most Remarkable Creature about caracara’s, which are very intriguing, intelligent birds. There’s so much great work going on. And you know, I find all of it very, very inspiring and motivating.

I have to get the book on the Blakiston’s fish owl, because again, I think they’re my new favorite.

Yeah, it’s great.

I want to end on something that I’ve been thinking about this whole time that I’ve been dying to ask, which is obviously for people like me that are not bird people. What is your Ultimate Bird fact to lure in a skeptic?

Well, let me just tell you briefly about a bird called the Kia which is a parrot in New Zealand. And this bird is about as close to a child as you will see. In the animal world. It is absolutely incredibly playful, incredibly bold, smart, cute. I had an the great joy of meeting these birds in an aviary once and the researchers said take off your earrings, take off your watch, take everything off because they’re going to explore you, all of you. And I did I took you know everything off I come into the aviary and these little birds little green parrots came flocking to me like I could go as an ant bringing them presents, you know, they were just all over the hopping up on my shoulders. And what I’d forgotten about was that my sneakers and they went after my shoelaces you know unraveling them and but they are absolutely charming birds and they did remind me so much of children and I just fell in love on the spot. So they’re renowned for their play and also for their capacity to collaborate to work together on things. So I just think that’s pretty magnificent in the bird world.

I love that. I think that yeah, I’m coming around on birds and it is so much to do with this incredible book. What an Owl Knows, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today. I can’t wait for everyone to pick up this book. I can’t wait for them to pick up your other books on birds once they finish this one and they’re drawn into this world. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jenna. It was a great joy.