Spotted Owls: Shadows in an Old-Growth Forest.

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

The spotted owl is the most studied owl in North America. It is also one of the most endangered species. Photographer Jared Hobbs and author Richard Cannings have both had a long association with the bird, and this lovely coffee-table book is a well-produced documentary record of it.

Hobbs, who saw his first spotted owl in 1997 while working as a biologist in British Columbia, was captivated by the bird’s beauty and spent the next 10 years tracking and photographing it in the dense, mountainous, old-growth forests from British Columbia to Mexico. His stunning photographs featured in the book wonderfully convey “the beauty of this owl and the tragedy of its decline.” The images, which are clear with excellent colour, bring the viewer much closer to the bird than one would ever see in nature. The birds are shown from the front, back, perching, landing, hunting, feeding, open-mouthed, and as downy chicks. The book also includes gorgeous shots of habitats, owl predators, and owl prey.

Cannings’s accompanying text is accessible and non-technical (e.g., the spotted owl as a “sit-and-wait predator”). While the book celebrates the spotted owl, it also laments the alarming decline of the species, despite legislative measures going back to the 1970s that were taken to protect it. As Cannings documents, spotted owl populations in Canada have fallen from 100 pairs in 1990 to three pairs in 2006 (only one of which bred successfully). The decline is attributed to the loss of the bird’s habitat and the encroachment of the barred owl, which entered British Columbia in the 1940s. The barred owl not only fares better in a broader range of environments, there is concern that its hybridization with the spotted owl may overwhelm the species.

All libraries will want to include this fine volume in their collections.