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.
- raises a wing *
Such a derp. I love it.
They are so cute in their giant lint ball phase. 🥰
The perfect response to do many texts.
With so many parts of the face to emote with, I don’t know if I’d be able to hide my feelings from certain people. 😜
The eyes almost look fake in this one lol!
Indeed.
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!
Owls can control their pupils independently. They have such neat adaptations to make them such effective hunters. Amazing you noticed that detail - are you sure you’re not an owl?
I agree with every statement you have made! 😆
Yes? What do you need me for?
We should have some of these shipped over to you, since you don’t have them where you’re at.
You’ve got lots of good ones, but GHO are top tier hiboux!
I’m sure your neighbors will enjoy the great hoot as well! 😁
Don’t get my hopes up (T_T)
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.
I will never get over how strange owls are. Such funny looking creatures.
I have loved learning about them so much. Every part of them is designed with purpose, and there’s no room for anything extra.
If they ever develop the ability to metabolize 2nd gen rodenticides, they’d be as near perfect for the modern world as can be.
Better skull protection would be nice, but extra weight would cancel out other skill points, so I think that would be a wash.
Saw this got a downvote, so there may be a misunderstanding worth discussing.
There are 2 types of rodenticide, 1st generation and 2nd.
1st Gen requires repeated consumption by a rodent to be lethal. They are typically excreted after a week.
2nd Gen are lethal in a single dose, and the chemicals persist in organs.
Any poisoned rodent is going to be much easier for a predator to catch. With 1st gen poisons, they have a chance to eventually get rid of the poison from eating poisoned rodents. By eating rodents poisoned with 2nd gen poisons, they lose the ability to have the poison eventually work its way out of their system, and it instead accumulates over extended periods of time.
As long as anyone uses poison as a method of animal control, there will be secondary poisonings of unintended animals. By eliminating the use of 2nd gen poisons, those animals have a much better chance of survival.
Having watched raptors suffering lethal doses of poison has not been pleasant, and there are many articles about them taking piles of poisoned rodents back to the nest and the whole nest dies.
So my comment was made with a wish they could handle being unintentionally poisoned, because I have to read so many stories of this stuff as it is now.
Ugh that sucks. Instead of expecting owls to adapt we should not used such harsh poison
Rules are (were?) slowly changing. They are getting banned in some places like California and British Columbia, though that BC link highlights even with “bans,” there are many loopholes in much of the legislation. While it is typically banned for private consumers, professional post control companies and anything deemed an “essential service” is allowed to use them, in amounts I’m sure dwarf what home use would use.
Essentially every animal rescue lobbies for bans, and things like Flaco having poisoning being at least somewhat responsible for his death brings public attention to the unintended effects. Hopefully more and more people will get on board and we will eventually be rid of them.
