The sweet, well written story of Martin living with Mumble, a tawny owl, in England. He covers the history of this bird, it's anatomy and provides colorful stories of this birds personality and habits as he shares 15 years with Mumble. They lived in both the city of London in a 7th floor flat and out in a countryside home is Sussex. Very sweet! I enjoyed it thoroughly! ( )

Inspired to read by NYTBR July 13 2014.

The intimately documated life with a tawny owl. A fascinating read. ( )

It started out slow and dry, but I found myself enjoying the last 3/4 of the book. ( )

There's about one magazine article worth of really great material here; anecdotes and genuine emotion. Then there's some diary entries, etc which would be tremendously useful if, say, you were considering getting an owl as a pet. He really does include both the good and the bad in here, and that's pretty fascinating. The rest of the book (about 50% by volume) consists of the author, who knows a great deal about many things but who is, at best, an amateur anatomist, trying to lecture us on owl physiognomy. He's mostly not -wrong- in this, but it's not his strength, and therefore is really quite the slog. ( )