'Most fantastical of fowls'

Press, 16 June 1979, Page 17

'Most fantastical of fowls'

Owls. Edited by Lynn Hughes. W. H. Allen, 1979. 56 pp. $3.95. (Reviewed by Lorna Buchanan) New Zealand has its morepork, but that curious little bird is a very inadequent representative of the great family of owls familiar in Western Europe. Owls are night birds, heard but seldom seen, beloved of poets, lovers, night watchers, and those who find a brooding mystery in things of the dark. The English writer Lynn Hughes has put together a haunting collection of owlish quotations and suitable owl illustrations. These cover the field from Wol, whose house was blown over in “The House at Pooh Corner,” to the owl in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” which “gives the stern’st good-night.” The sample illustration here is “The Owl of Cwm Cowlyd,” drawn by John Petts in 1977 for Lynn Hughes. It might well illustrate the dreaded telegram in Max Beerbohm’s “Zuleika Dobson" in which the noble Duke was told “last night two black owls came and perched on battlements.” Coleridge, Vaughan. Lear, and Gray’s “mopeing owl” all have a place. Enough said about a charmingly pointless little book. “Punch” settled the “owl question” more than 100 years ago in the verse: “A wise old owl sat in an oak,