Beautiful bird. Such long wings and powerful looking feet. I wouldn’t want to get too close to those talons.
You can see the fringe on the front edge of her wings. I forgot if you said that helps them fly silently.
I can’t tell if that fringe in the snowy feather is just some of her feathers fluffing up or if Snowies just have bigger fringes. I’ve only ever seen it on smaller and less insulated owl. 😁
I’ve always read it breaks up the turbulence over the wings into much smaller bits to cut down on the air noise. I think about it like if you hold your hand out the car window and if you hold it more vertically you hear a whipping noise, but if you make it more horizontal it’s more quiet.
Owls also have much longer wings than most birds would typically have. I always explain that as they can flap less and glide more to make them quieter while having the same lift, like running a larger PC fan at a lower rpm so it moves the same amount of air over the CPU while generating less noise.
