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## Meet the editor

Heimo Mikkola received his PhD degree in Applied Zoology and Limnology from the University of Kuopio, Finland and his thesis was on Ecological Relationships in European owls. Partly based on that academic work, he wrote a very popular book "Owls of Europe" published in 1983 in the UK. Since 1988, he has been an adjunct Professor of the Eastern Finland University but instead of Finland he has worked mainly abroad for well

over 30 years in Africa (22 years), South America (6 years) and Central and Southeast Asia (4 years) mainly with the African Development Bank and the United Nations. During these years, he has had many opportunities to visit and study owls in over 130 countries. In many of the countries he undertook public interviews to gain insight in to how people see the owls and their conservation. Some rarely known owl beliefs in Central Asia are included in this book. Owl studies often took him to the best bat biotopes as well, and he started to collect data on bats eaten by owls. In 2014, he was given the title of "Champion of Owls" in Houston, USA, mainly because of his six worldwide distributed and translated owl books. Thus far he has written 220 papers and books on owls, and recently a Japanese edition of his "Owls of the World" book was published in Tokyo.

Contents

Increasing? *by Heimo Mikkola*

Strategies of Owl Reproduction *by Isaac Oluseun Adejumo*

*and José Luis Rangel-Salazar*

*by Hafidzi Mohd Noor*

and Turkmenistan *by Heimo Mikkola*

Propagation of Barn Owls (Tyto Javanica)

*by Alan Sieradzki and Heimo Mikkola*

A Review of European Owls as Predators of Bats

**Preface III**

**Chapter 1 1** Introductory Chapter: Why the Number of Owl Species in the World Continues

**Chapter 2 13**

**Chapter 3 29** Bird Behaviour during Prey-Predator Interaction in a Tropical Forest in México

**Chapter 4 51**

**Chapter 5 67**

**Chapter 6 87** Owl Beliefs in Kyrgyzstan and Some Comparison with Kazakhstan, Mongolia

*by Pedro Ramírez-Santos, Paula L. Enríquez, José Raúl Vázquez-Pérez* 

Sustainable Control of Rats by Rodenticide Application and Natural

## Contents


Preface

Owls have held a special fascination for humans for thousands of years. And owls are one of the world's oldest species of Vertebrate. Fossil remains dating back 60 million years have been found and these reveal that owls have changed very little in that time [1]. Practically every culture has a story to tell about owls. Considering

It is a paradox that owls are one of the most beneficial group of birds, but also one of the least understood [2]. Few other birds or animals have gathered so many different and contradictory beliefs about them: owls have been both feared and venerated, despised and admired, considered wise and foolish, associated with witchcraft, medicine, weather, births and deaths – and have even found their way into *haute cuisine* [3].

Folklore has it that owls are birds of ill omen and that deception is one of their favourite ploys. Contrary to this, it must be said that the owl has been widely

admired through the ages by deities, scholars, poets and animal lovers in general [4]. Owls have also appeared on artefacts such as Peruvian Moche pottery jugs, North American Indian pipes and shields, on African masks, and delicate Chinese and

With their unearthly nocturnal calls, their humanlike faces and piercing binocular vision, members of the owl family *Strigidae* have provoked a deep and universal

Large, piercing all-seeing eyes. Photo: Courtesy of Johan J. Ingles.

all these stories together, they form a perplexing composite.

Japanese paintings [5].

response in human beings.
