Miriam Darlington

Miriam Darlington's interest in otters borders on the obsessional.She has spent a year of her life following them, seeking out experts as passionate as she is, sleeping in the wild to track them down. Local, distant, rural, seaside and urban habitats are of equal interest to her. She writes passionately, poetically, beautifully about otters - of course - but also about the natural world in general, conjuring up vivid pictures of seeping estuaries, rough moorland, urban wasteland, tumbling streams and lazy rivers. This is an evocative and worthwhile read, only sometimes failing to engage my commitment as a reader. It was a big ask to take me otter-hunting for a whole year. Miriam Darlington jolly nearly succeeded.… (more)

An enjoyable survey of one woman’s encounters with owls that may be encountered in the U.K…. With a couple more unlikely vagrants introduced for good measure. An attempt is made to integrate the author’s experiences with her son’s mysterious illness into her experiences with owls, but I didn’t find it very well integrated.Still, convincingly communicates the thrill of seeing the owls in the wild. And does a nice job both recognizing human attachment to owls and breaking some of the “cute” labels we’ve misguidedly saddled owls with… (more)

Excerpted from a longer article:

Timely Take-aways for Life-long Learning: Bird Species
From eagles and hawks to pelicans and owls, several new works of nonfiction for adults examine the lives of specific bird species. Along the way, they discuss the importance of conservation and strategies being use to save these beloved species.

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The Wise Hours: A Journal into the Wild and Secret World of Owls
Miriam Darlington, 2023, Tin House Books, an imprint of W. W. Norton
Themes: Nature, Animals, Birds, Owls
Sharing her fieldwork from around the world, this nature writer conveys her passion for owls and the natural world. Weaving together the story of her journey to understand owls with her personal challenges, the author creates a compelling narrative connecting our two worlds.
Take-aways: Science teachers will enjoy reading about the author’s encounters with a wide range of owls in the wild.
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Whether helping educators keep up-to-date in their subject-areas, promoting student reading in the content-areas, or simply encouraging nonfiction leisure reading, teacher librarians need to be aware of the best new titles across the curriculum and how to activate life-long learning. - Annette Lamb… (more)

Owls have fascinated and terrified people for thousands of years. These raptors, most of whom hunt at night or at the witching hour of dusk have been seen as the harbingers of doom or symbols of wisdom. Nowadays science has explained just how specialised these beautiful birds are. They use their wise looking faces to focus the minutest sound into their binaural hearing, how their feathers have evolved to ensure that they are utterly silent when flying.

She could hear owls calling from her bedroom window and wanted to see if she could spot them as they went looking for food each night, and discovering her local owls sparked something inside her. Initially, Darlington was intending to head out onto the moors and woods to find the five species of owl in Britain, which are the Barn Owl, Tawny Owl, Little Owl and the Short and Long-Eared Owls, but like with the otters in her previous book these elusive birds became an obsession too.

This fascination with the owls of the UK takes a step up when she finds herself booking a flight to Kikinda in Serbia to see the thousands of Long-Eared Owls that visit the town. Now Darlington is completely hooked and trips to southern Spain, France and Finland are arranged to see the Pygmy Owls and Snowy Owls.

Like a lot of natural history books at the moment, there is a personal element too, and this is no different as she tries to balance work and family life and they find out that her son Benji has a condition that affects the decisions that he can make with his life. It is full of fascinating details and facts and is a touching book about those most elusive and silent of raptors and the way that Darlington becomes besotted by them; if you liked Otter Country then this should be on your reading list.… (more)