From Christopher Swales
A Barn Owl hunting this morning unfortunately it has been in an accident at some point but it was flying and hunting successfully. North Yorkshire Coast.
Barn Owls are one of the majority of owls that have asymmetrical ears, giving them 3 dimensional hearing. This allows many to be releasable after they are patched up, as they can still find food.
This picture had me thinking, there are many other badass characters that are down an eyeball but are still tough as nails. Who is your favorite?
If owls could talk! What could cause this?
While this can be the result of a fight with another animal, it is usually caused by humans.
Owl eyes are huge compared to our own. So big they can’t even be round anymore! They actually can make up about 2/3 of the whole owl’s head. That’s why they move their heads around so much. The eyes are just too large to move anymore.
This is normally a great thing that lets them find all the tastiest food in their territory, but there is also one huge negative. When they have an impact, say with a house or car, those eyeballs are one of the areas most susceptible to damage.
An owl can hit window glass like any other bird, especially at night, but cars are a huge problem for owls. Roadways are vast wide open spaces with great lines of sight for the owls. Also, with people littering from cars, that draws the little animals they eat to come to the roadside to search that litter for leftover food. The owl dives in low to grab the rodent with its feet, putting it right in the path of cars.
I’ve seen rescues give numbers up to 98-99% of owl injuries being caused by humans. Mainly cars, but things that are near invisible in the dark like sports netting (soccer, basketball, hockey netting) or fishing line cast off into tree or wire/barbed wire fencing will catch them and they will further hurt themselves trying to escape, or worse if no one finds them where they are trapped.
The eyes can sometimes be saved, but sometimes not, where they will remove the eye before it causes further trouble. If they are able to hunt after recovery, they can be returned to where they came from to lead successful and hopefully safe lives.
Many owls have their ears offset, with one being higher than the other. This allows them to hear not just near/far and left/right like we can, but also much more precisely up/down, giving them a 3D map of sound, like radar. This is what allows them to hunt on those moonless nights. They can hunt successfully even in the complete absence of light. There were famous experiments done on this by the couple that went on to study whale sounds.
That is what let this fellow return to the wild after whatever event happened to him. He’s still got one really sharp and powerful eye, but thankfully his super hearing can compensate enough for him to not have any issues. The flat face shape most owls have is like a satellite dish, and it is curved inward to collect sound waves and funnel them to the ear canals, amplifying the sounds around them.
I’ve got a bunch of posts here that go into all these things if you want to know more about any of this, or just stick around, I revisit all these things periodically because there are just so many amazing things about owls!
That’s Odin. You can’t tell me that’s not Odin.
The Owl-Father and King of Owlsgard!
Nice to know it’s hunting well :)
He’s one tough cookie. Can’t let a little thing like that keep him down! 😉
