Carl Safina, Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

December 16 2023, 16:00 BST/ 10:00 EDT/ 07:00 PST (4pm BST/ 10am EDT/ 7am PST)

Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

When the ecologist Carl Safina took in a wounded baby screech owl, he expected that she’d be a temporary guest, just like other wild orphans he and his wife Patricia had rescued over the years. But the tiny creature—named Alfie—took a long time to heal. Carl and Patricia could never have predicted that when Alfie was finally able to live free, she would choose to maintain a connection and establish her territory with their home at its center, attract a wild mate, and raise her babies right outside his studio window. Nor could they have guessed that the Covid-19 pandemic would grant the graciousness of time to form a profound bond with Alfie, while Alfie and her brood provided solace and sanity in a year upended.

Safina relates how, through months of lockdown, Alfie pulled them into her world as through a portal. Alfie and Me is a book about relationships that are possible when we blur the boundaries between humans and the rest of life on Earth. 

It is also an exploration into what could be gained by allowing ourselves to connect at a deeper level—as other cultures have done around the world, over millennia—and what we lose through our particular culture’s self-imposed exile from the living world. 

About the speaker

Carl Safina is an ecologist, author, and founding President of the Safina Center. He is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University. His work centers on animal psychology and the relationship between humans and nature. His newest book, Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe, is a moving account of raising, then freeing, an orphaned screech owl, whose lasting friendship with him illuminates humanity’s relationship with the world.