Field Guide to Owls of California and the West (Volume 93) (California Natural History Guides)

Great gift for people interested in learning more about owls.

The size of a Peterson series field guide but perhaps a bit thicker. Covers everything one might want to know about the owls of our West. Detailed and very readable descriptions of their biology, habits, how to find them and their interaction with humans. Next is an excellent species account with wonderful color illustations and photos of owls in action and as field guide representatives. Comprehensive, incisive and beautifully put together -- a real buy!

I was reading this one afternoon at the doctor's office. When the doctor saw it, she was excited because she had just returned from a hiking trip where they saw lots of owls. I ordered it for her; she paid me back. Fascinating information.

It's already been a great resource this year - the author/artist have done an excellent job plus it's fun to read !

Great reference book. very detailed and descriptive. My go to book for Owls.

I am a lover of all animals but especially owls and wolves. This is a wonderful little book with great illustrations. I highly recommend it to any Owl "fans".

Hands down the best FIELD GUIDE on North American owls. Various books on the topic exist, but most of the others (including the Peterson's book) are large format coffee table type books, not field guides. If you desire something compact, brick-like, dense with in-depth species accounts, detailed natural history, illustrations and photographs to help locate, identify, observe and understand the lives and habits of every species of North America owl, no other book will better satisfy. I can't help speculating the sole critical review here seems motivated by some personal grievance with the author, because in my opinion (as an avid naturalist with an extensive field guide collection) this guide definitely meets and exceeds the high standards set by Peterson's / Audubon / Kaufman / ect. Very satisfied & highly recommended!

Usually a natural history book by a major university press is written by a research biologist with personal expertise in the science of the subject at hand. For instance, Dr. James Duncan wrote a very good book on owls of the world and their biology and conservation, and Dr. Duncan is a renowed Canadian owl biologist working on field studies of multiple species. Robert Nero wrote the monograph on the great gray owl, and is an acknowledged expert on that species.In contrast, Hans Peeters is a retired community college teacher who does no research, but is an avid birdwatcher and a very good painter. Apparently he has great personal connections that led to his invitation to write such a book. Amazingly, many of the endorsements of the book are by fellow birdwatchers such as Clay Sutton and Allen Fish and not by owl experts. Presumably the material for the book was gleaned from literature searches, limited personal experience of the author while walking on his 1 1/2 acre wooded property (or other places), plus personal communications from the author to experts such as Pete Bloom in order to obtain material for the book.Since the author is indisputedly a highly intelligent man and well-connected, he could produce a generally coherent, accurate book that is readable and enjoyable, but not with the depth of a real expert. Thus, to fill in the book, which was supposed to be about owls of California, he had to expand to owls of the West, albeit somewhat haphazardly and superficially. But in reality, one finds mention of owls of everywhere from Indiana to Malaysia, including photos of non-indigenous owls in a book about California owls. This would only happen in such a book with such an author. To fill in the book, also we find essentially irrelevant information to stretch out superficial discussions, such as a very minimal discussion of owl migration and dispersal with comments on the use of solar-powered satellite telemetry to study the diurnal raptor, the peregrine falcon, which as nothing to do with owl migration and its research, but just happens to be something known to the author and is a way of the author recognizing one of his friends who studies peregrine falcons but not owls.So, yes, you can read clever commentaries about owls seeming like samurai. And you can get good information as a birdwatcher on how to tell owls apart and how to find them in the field and all sorts of information on the biology of owls that a decent literature search would reveal.You won't learn that burrowing owls were recommended for endangered species protections by essentially all the state's major burrowing owl biologists, but that the state overturned those biology-based recommendations under pressure from industries including agriculture, building trades and land developers. You won't even see mention of an interesting early citation from the author's own mentor, Ned Johnson, on the migratory status of flammulated owls.There is nothing wrong with this book, but it is not all that it could be. It lacks the perspective of a real owl researcher. Owl mobbing could have been better explained by a researcher who uses a typical technique to trap raptors, the use of a live great horned owl with dho-gaza, which incites mobbing and reveals behaviors of all sorts of fauna that would have been revealing in a book of this sort. Researchers who trap owls using live bait would have had insights about whether diurnal owls need to cast a pellet before they attempt to feed. Instead, the author relies on discussions of captive owls and even captive diurnal raptors whose habits are often related to the scheduling established for them by their human handlers and which may or may not relate to the lives of wild birds.So, this is an enjoyable book, well written, but not a deep book. It is a bird watchers book, not a product of deep research on even one species.There are some good photos and some decent drawings in the book. Many of the photos and drawings seem to represent captive or young owls that are easy to manipulate for such purposes.This book is a delicious chocolate milkshake. If you want a real beef hamburger, you need to go elsewhere.Stan MooreFairfax Raptor ResearchSan Geronimo, CA