Lady Grayl: Owl with a Mission

This is the story of a man and his owl. But what a man and what an owl! The owl is one of our planet’s most beautiful and elusive beings, an enchanting spook, a feathered spirit from some ancient world.

The man is Robert Nero, his name synonymous with that of the Great Gray Owl, his love affair with the species spanning twenty-five years. For me, a non-professional adrift in a sea of biologists, it is heartening to find in Dr. Nero not just the able scientific mind but also a sense of wonder, undiminished by the years. Perhaps it is the mortality of all living things that makes them exquisite to him, for he writes of their brief beauty in poetry and prose. His words remind us of joys we once knew, of worlds to which we have grown blind.

What a privilege it is to share a time on Earth with a man like this, and to call him friend.

• Katherine McKeever, The Owl Foundation, Vineland, 1994

Bob Nero, one of Canada’s finest nature writers, has done it again! His fifth book, about Lady Grayl, is a personal account, something close to a love story. For nine years, since the rescue of a starving runt owlet from a wild brood, he has taken his beautiful owl, Lady Grayl, to countless schools and public meetings to preach the gospel of conservation. She and Bob are well-known throughout Manitoba, and beyond.

Bob’s careful observations of this imprinted owl supplement his 25 years of research into Great Gray Owls in the wild. Six sensitive poems and numerous photographs depict the owl in many moods and settings. This book will rank along with Bernd Heinrich’s acclaimed One Man’s Owl, which dealt with an imprinted Great Horned Owl, and will be of special interest to all who have been fortunate enough to see Lady Grayl.

• C. Stuart Houston, University of Saskatchewan