Superbowl

Olmsted, an Eastern Screech Owl

The bigger owls were much less cooperative 😅

Sunny the Barred Owl. Such a mopey face! 🥰

This is a foot of a Great Horned Owl. I feel my have in the pic doesn't do the foot justice. I've measured my hand for reference and from wrist to middle finger tip, it's 8 inches or 20 cm, so you can use that to gauge the size of the things I'm holding, if that helps.

While my hand is bigger, the owl would be many times more powerful in grip strength, probably 4x as strong as me due to way their tendons are structured. This bit of anatomy is one of their most crucial to survival.

Owls attack prey feet first to protect their face and the feet have both the sharp talons and grippy surface to grab on, and then this strong tendons will crush what they get a hold of, breaking the spine of the prey.

Strig, the Great Horned Owl

Other misc facts I learned:

Some of the raptor gloves for bigger birds are made of kangaroo leather, which is tougher than cow leather. Looking at product descriptions, it describes kangaroo leather as the most puncture resistant leather, which is good when dealing with large powerful talons.

The operculum is the muscle that controls an owl's ears. Fish also have operculum muscles, which are what flaps their gills.

To start a banding program, you need to apply to the government and demonstrate you have the ability to handle the birds you want to study and write a report detailing why you want to study a particular bird species in a particular area and get their approval. There is very much involved in the whole licensing program.

There are different mist nets to catch different birds. The program leader said a hawk would punch right through his nets, but they are put out at night for the owls in places owls are likely to fly and not other birds.

The nets are checked every 20 minutes while they are out. It is illegal to possess mist nets without a license as they are abused for poaching. To possess any bird or part of a bird without a license is a felony and it is taken very seriously, so it was neat to be able to handle feathers and parts of the raptors in person.

You can't age a bird by the UV light technique after 4 or 5 years. When they are younger, they don't have enough energy to replace them all every year, but once they get strong enough they can, so it become impossible to age them. They're just considered "adult birds" from then on.

There's probably more that in forgetting, but it was a lot of fun. It was a 2 hour program and was a $15 donation for attendance and we got refreshments as well. Very much worth it, and would have been even more amazing if we had caught some owls, but that's the luck of the draw...

I'm learning all these people are so knowledge because of how rigorous the requirements are to get any of these jobs, and there are many long and random hours of dedication involved too with with them, because you largely have to do it on the animals' schedules, so everyone you will meet really knows their stuff and loves to share there knowledge because they practically have to make it their life.

I'll be honest: I came here not caring terribly much about owls, but now I feel something about owls. Thanks for participating in and posting all of this!

This is the banding station.

The books in the back are detailed guides about all North American bird species. It's a good reference to all kinds of weights and measurements they will take on any of the birds they're banding.

The grey plastic box in front of the books is a caliper for detailed measurements.

The beige cloth bag is for transporting the birds from the mist nets to the station.

The leg sizing gauge is the metal thing under the bird bag with all the cut outs.

There is a scale for getting weights on the birds.

The 3 little lights are UV lights for aging the birds by checking their molt patterns.

You can kinda see the banding and debanding pliers at the base of the 3 lights.

The metal clipboard has all the paperwork to record the required observations and all the licensing required by the USGS to conduct the banding.

Some rulers for taking measurements of the wings, beak, etc

Off to the right, the board with little containers stuck to it has different size bird bands.

Screech Owl vs Prairie Falcon feathers

Great Horned Owl vs Red Tailed Hawk feathers

You can see the owl feathers are fatter and rounder for silent flight while the hawk and falcon are sleeker and pointier for more speed at the cost of more flapping sound.

Tried to get some shots of the unique combed edges of the feathers that make the sound killing micro turbulence. These have seen a lot of handling from guests, so not the best, but you get the idea.

Thank you for the brilliant, and through post. I learned so much! 👏👏👏👏

This is a great post and I learned a lot today! I didn't realize just how interesting owls were even though I had general knowledge about them

great photos btw🤗