cancel2 2022
Canceled
The barn owl is a ‘heart-faced killer’ whose hissing youngsters, ‘unattractive babies that only a mother could love’, have been known to ‘devour their weaker, more recently hatched siblings, swallowing them down whole'
Her field notes are excellent. I had no idea that the barn owl is using its distinctive heart-shaped white face (so ghostly in the dark) to enable it to hunt. Its facial disc acts like a sound scanner to ‘capture sound waves and transport the faintest of whispers to the asymmetrical ears’.
The owl’s hearing is so accurate it should be called ‘earsight’. Darlington concludes: ‘It is not surprising that the owl once developed a reputation for possessing a dark side; its skills must have seemed skin-creepingly powerful. [But] the ignorance has been replaced by a little more understanding.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-5397183/The-secret-life-heart-faced-killer.html
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