Owl

“The ancients,” writes William Service, “attributed to the owl great wisdom. I, more careful, attribute to him the keenest appetite to find things out.” The same might be said of Service himself. His Owl is less the result of wisdom than of a keen if bemused curiosity. No man can know all about a bird, especially a screech owl who possesses, as the book jacket puts it, the proportions of a beer can and the personality of a bank president. But a year of open-minded daily contact with such a creature is bound to lead to something, and in this case it has led to one of the most elegant and perceptive pieces of nature writing since T. H. White fell in with a goshawk.