Enjoy this photo dump of some of the patients we’ve seen this year. All of these owls have been released and we still have four in our care. This year, they’ve come to us for window and auto collisions, gunshots, fishing line, and electricity. Let’s appreciate the beauty of these regal raptors and do our part in helping them stay wild.
In the first photo, the owl has a shadow over his left eye, and the pupil is larger than the right. Do their pupils dilate independently of one another, or is this the unfortunate result of brain trauma? If it’s natural, that’s a really cool adaptation.
Great attention to detail!
Owls not only have the ability to dilate their pupils independently, but they can also do it voluntarily. The only thing they can’t do with their eyes is to move them, as they are not spherical like ours, but shaped like a light bulb, with the fat end inside their skull. This is why they have to move their entire head to look at things.
To see some more about this independent dilation and how checking its function is used to test for eye injury, check this post and this post.
The second linked post has one of my fav pics of the year as well!
Rock on Wild Sies Raptor Center! (But please get a Lemmy account or Mastodon or something! I canna see teh facepalz!)
GHO is the default owl. When you first see owls in books, it’s the GHO. When you’re on other planets explaining owls to extraterrestrial races who have never seen them before - your’e most often explaining the GHO.
Uh, or so I’m told.
They have a nicer than average website where you can see their educational animals and also a Youtube channel if you want to see them without Zuck or Elon joining in.
GHO is the quintessential North America owl without doubt. I imagine it’s the Eagle owl for Eurasia. Not sure what it’d be for South America, Africa, or Australia though. It sound probably be the Barn Owl for everyone since it’s the only owl we all have, but for some reason I think the horned owls always seem to take the popularity polls.
I love Barn Owls too, but you gotta admit, they’re a bit scary looking and very scary sounding.
Speaking of which: I recently read a book that was a bit gothic in style, and the author described the character walking through the woods and hearing a screech owl. I immediately wondered if the author actually knew what a screech owl sounds like. My fellow owl enthusiasts, what do you think? Do you think she was imagining a Barn Owl sound but didn’t realize that screech owls don’t make that sound?
Screech Owl noises are too cute. They would do the exact opposite of adding tension to a scene.
Barn or Barred are the spooky ones.
- raises a wing *
