Owls

Last night I went to a Master Naturalist meeting where Dave Crawford talked about owls.  This time he used a different method of presentation.  There was no power point.  I like power point but to tell the truth, it was a relief not to have a power point presentation for once.  Instead he made his points through story telling.  For instance when talking about owl eyesight he told a story of a falconer who had a great horned owl.  The owl did not like to sit in a crate when being transported. This owl preferred to perch on the passenger seat back and would be more cooperative when allowed to sit on the passenger seat back.  As they drove along the falconer would notice the owl change demeanor when it saw something on the road side.  Looking ahead, the owl would focus on something the driver could not see.  Eventually it would turn it's head as the car passed the object it was looking at and the owl would look behind for a while until it lost interest.  So the falconer decided to watch the odometer and track how far the car traveled from when the owl first focused on something until it turned it's head back and how long the car traveled before the owl quit looking behind and looked forward again.  Turns out the owl would focus on an object a full half mile away and would continue looking back until another half mile had passed.  See, this is so much more interesting and easy to remember than seeing a slide that says an owl can see .5 miles distance.  When talking about the strength of the owl's talons he talked about a volunteer at the Raptor Center.  The owls never liked being taken from their room to go and see the vet. So the volunteer knew it would be best to walk past their room first (as if he wasn't going to stop there) and then dash back and enter the room and grab the owl before it could react.  If the owl knew the volunteer was coming to take it to the vet it would fall off it's perch and lie on the floor making it impossible to pick up safely.  One day the volunteer was going to take an owl to the vet.  He went past the door, dashed back and tried to grab the owl but the owl was quick and was halfway falling to the floor.  The owl grabbed the man by the hand.  The man was wearing a falconer's leather glove with extra padding over the palm.  The owl pierced the thick leather on the palm of the glove, pierced the man's hand between the finger bones, and pierced to top layer of glove on top of the man's hand.  Again, this graphic story is going to help me remember that an owl has a super strong talon more than any power point slide ever could.  I had a great evening listening to owl stories.  Owls are fascinating creatures.