Have you ever seen a real live owl?
We had two owls and a falcon in the Jean Rivard branch of the library on October 22nd, and we learned quite a bit about owls. We invited the Ecomuseum to come teach us about owls and they sent Jenny to come and show us some owls and tell us about them. She showed us feathers from different birds and demonstrated how quiet owl feathers are.
The feathers of an owl are flexible and very quiet.
An owl's wing is large and soft.
She also shows us a claw from an owl. The parts that she showed us were from animals that had died. The Ecomuseum does not kill animals or buy animals. They keep injured animals and orphaned animals, animals that can not live in the wild.
See how sharp the owl's claw is!
The feathers and claw make the owls good hunters. What else do they need to be good hunter’s?
They need good vision! Owls have excellent vision and can see a mouse from 6 kilometers away! Their eyes are large and take up a lot of room in their head. Because their eyes are so large, they can not move them as we can. However they have an incredible ability to twist their entire head!
Falcons also are smaller birds of prey with eyes that very large in relation to their heads. Jenny showed us the skull of a falcon.
Note how large the openings for the eyes are!
If you would like to see some pictures of the live birds, check our our Jean Rivard branch blog.
[...] If you would like to learn more about what we learned at the owl presentation, take a look at our science blog. [...]