Book Review - Wesley: The story of a remarkable owl by Stacey O'Brien

Stacey is a besotted biologist who adopts a baby owl who has a wing injury and cannot be rehabilitated to the wild. She doesn't realize that Wesley will become the companion of 19 years of her life and will help to develop our understanding of his species along the way. Full of owl facts and very human emotion as Stacey learns 'The Way of the Owl" from an owl with great personality and a deal of playfulness. One of the most interesting features was the difference in how to 'train' owls as opposed to creatures we are more used to living with such as cats and dogs. One for animal lovers. Find it in the Biography section.
Wendy

The Wisdom of Birds

Subtitled "An Illustrated History of Ornithology", this is a detailed book full of surprising knowledge. Starting with Aristotle, through the ages, men (mostly men) have studied and written about bird biology and behaviour. In the early days of modern academic study, the scientific men were dismissive of the vast store of knowledge built up by amateur bird watchers and bird keepers but as time went by, this knowledge was synthesised and led to much greater understanding. I found the historical insights of most interest.
Why was an egg-laying cockerel burnt at the stake?
Which of Mozart's compositions was based on the song of his pet starling?
How was the role of bird song and plumage display interpreted over the years?
How did they eventually discover that some birds migrated and didn't actually spend the winter hibernating at the bottom of frozen ponds?
All wrapped up with a discussion on how scientific thought and process generally developed and affected the study of birds especially the great legacy of Charles Darwin - Natural Selection.
You can learn a lot (even if , as I did, you skip some of the more technical explanations) and also enjoy the reproductions of illustrations from famous historical bird texts.
Wendy