Blakiston’s Fish Owl on Hokkaido

When Jonathan Slaght did his analysis on Blakiston’s Fish Owl in Russia’s Far East – which he describes in his excellent book “Owls of the Japanese Ice” – he needed to cope not solely with excessive chilly but additionally with reasonably dangerous music:

“Katkov stuffed our commutes with loud music. He was significantly keen on a combination tape of Russian songs dominated by wolf-related themes, which we listened to completely for the primary week. Ultimately, I uninterested in this and started to poke across the glove compartment for different choices, however there have been few. It turned out that growling, protracted howls, and lyrics like “You could suppose I’m a canine, however actually I’m a wolf” turn out to be tolerable when the options are dance remixes of the Carpenters’ love ballads.”

On Hokkaido, seeing a Blakiston’s Fish Owl is way simpler. Sitting in a heated(!) disguise, one has to deal with the loud noise of older Chinese language photographers and the prospect of not seeing the chook in any respect regardless of staying up all night time, however that’s about it.

Articles about Blakiston’s Fish Owl usually begin by stating that that is the most important owl alive – although the HBW offers this honor to the Eurasian Eagle Owl (“world’s heaviest owl”) after which instantly contradicts itself by giving a weight of 2280–4200 g for the feminine Eurasian and 3360–4600 g for the feminine Blakiston’s (in each species, the females are heavier than the males).

Blakiston’s Fish Owl is endangered – some estimates give a complete variety of fewer than 2500 mature people.

As if that wasn’t a sufficiently small quantity already, one paper suggests splitting the species based mostly on bioacoustic knowledge and creating the Northern Fish Owl.

The owl can also be on the heart of conservation efforts, see here for particulars.

As traditional, habitat destruction is the foremost problem endangering this species. This has different penalties than simply reducing the inhabitants – habitat that has all the necessities wanted by the owl (previous forest for nest constructing, rivers with fish that don’t freeze within the winter) is now so uncommon and fragmented that the genetic exchange between the remaining very native populations can also be very restricted (consider incest however with out the yuck issue).

Thomas Blakiston (1832 – 1891) was an English explorer and naturalist, Wikipedia says – although I’m nonetheless not fairly certain whether or not the phrase naturalist has any that means in any respect. Blakiston explored elements of Canada and Japan (together with Hokkaido) however ultimately moved to the USA, considering that it might be hotter there, however then dying of pneumonia in San Diego. How ironic.

Later within the e-book talked about originally of this submit, there may be one other paragraph on music: “As we drove to Terney within the whiteout circumstances of a blizzard, listening to the Carpenters lament misplaced love at ear-bleeding quantity, I requested Katkov if he had any songs about wolves.”