EDIT: Everything is posted now, so I’ll respond to any questions I can answer for you now. Enjoy, and I hope you learn some new things!
Went to a bird banding event held by Wildlands Conservancy last night. Unfortunately this year has been a bit of a poor showing due to the warm weather, and we didn’t end up with any owls.
There was still a great presentation on the owls of Pennsylvania and the bird banding process. We did get to meet some of the educational owls and handle some nice examples of things being discussed.
I got some time to talk to the guy running the banding and the lady running the animal education part of things and got some of my questions answered. I’ve been becoming really interested in learning more of the regulatory side of things. There is a real web of agencies that govern how wildlife can be handled.
Barn Owl skull. Here you can see the boney eye structures that support those massive powerful eye tubes.
Owls have the best night vision, but the lady said hawks and falcons have much better overall vision. She said the Red Tailed Hawk essentially has a 20x optical zoom built into its eyes. For nocturnal vision though, the owl can’t be beat.
Just realized I didn’t really get you any good pics of the ear openings on the skull. You can kinda see them, but not as good as I could have gotten. Here’s a highlighted model for you instead.