From Izzy Edwards
Female Barn Owl on the left has tan breast plumage with many spots, male (on the right) has paler breast in comparison with little to no spotting.
Most owls we can’t tell apart visually, but Barn Owls are one that we often can.
Do you favor the design of one or the other? I like the spots on Ms Owl, though Mr does have the whitest of white feathers… 🤔
Different birds are able to see past our visible light spectrum on both ends, but owls don’t seem to have all that much conclusive research on the subject.
I skimmed this paper, it’s got a lot of things I don’t understand, and it sounds like owls gave up a lot of the cones in their eyes for more rods. The cones are normally what detects UV light, but despite them not having the same cones as other birds, they still were leaning to owls having some degree of ability to see UV. The extent of that ability seemed to vary between the 4 species they looked at though, so it may exist for some owls and not others. Different owls are active at different times of day, so there could be quite a bit of variance, especially with near 250 species. Someone more understanding of the subject could probably make much more sense of the data provided here than I could though.
I didn’t have time to look much through this either, but there are also people that suspect barn owls of picking up some type of bioluminescent fungus from trees that gets on their feathers making them luminous, even potentially being the inspiration for mythical things like Will o’ the Whisps. Seemed interesting if one has the time.