I found this description from a writer on the hunt to document them. Really nicely written article that makes you feel like you’re there, but it’s more about the journey than the owl, so I don’t think I’ll give it its own post.

Here’s the first 2 paragraphs though. If you like the writing style, then I’d recommend you read the whole thing. I liked the writing style and might have to see if I can find the book he was working on in this.

Searching for Elusive Blakiston’s Fish Owls in the Ancient Forests of Primorye

Blakiston’s Fish Owl is the largest owl in the world, but that doesn’t make it easy to find. The endangered bird is a seldom-seen resident of far-east Asia, but several hundred pairs are thought to survive in the species’ epicenter: the old-growth forests of Primorye, a remote region of Russia that borders the Sea of Japan to the east and China and North Korea to its south. There, in 2000, conservationist and writer Jonathan C. Slaght accidentally flushed one of the elusive birds during a hike with a friend.

At first, the pair wasn’t sure what it was. “It was clearly an owl, but bigger than any I’d seen, about the size of an eagle but fluffier and more portly, with enormous ear tufts,” Slaght writes in his new book Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl. “Backlit by the hazy gray of a winter sky, it seemed almost too big and too comical to be a real bird, as if someone had hastily glued fistfuls of feathers to a yearling bear, then propped the dazed beast in the tree.”