{"id":103819,"date":"2021-11-07T06:14:28","date_gmt":"2021-11-07T13:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=103819"},"modified":"2021-11-07T06:14:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-07T13:14:28","slug":"a-burrowing-owl-and-an-ocular-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/07\/a-burrowing-owl-and-an-ocular-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"A Burrowing Owl And An Ocular Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

A mystery to me anyway but then maybe I’m missing something obvious.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Last night while looking for something else I stumbled across this older photo of a preening juvenile Burrowing Owl. Something about ‘his’ eyes just didn’t look quite right so I zoomed in on the high resolution version of the image for a closer look.<\/p>\n

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That’s when I noticed that his right eye is looking forward but his left eye appears<\/em> to be looking at, or attempting to look at, the feather in his bill. But owls are known to be unable to move their eyes within their skulls so how could that be? The National Geographic Resource Library<\/a><\/span><\/span> explains it this way:<\/p>\n

“Owls can\u2019t move their eyeballs. That\u2019s because owls don\u2019t have eyeballs at all. Instead, their eyes are shaped like tubes, held rigidly in place by bones called sclerotic rings. (Human eye sockets, which hold spherical eyes, do not have sclerotic rings.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Because owls can\u2019t roll their eyes around the way we do, they have to move their entire head to get a good look around. They frequently twist their head and \u201cbob and weave\u201d to expand their\u00a0field of view. Owls can turn their necks about 270\u00b0 in either direction, and 90\u00b0 up-and-down, without moving their shoulders!”<\/em><\/p>\n

So I’m curious about what’s going on here. Could it be that I’m misinterpreting what I’m seeing and the owl isn’t really looking in different directions with his eyes? I don’t think so but if not what’s the explanation?<\/p>\n

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In other photos I have of this bird his eyes appear ‘normal’ so I’m confused.<\/p>\n

What say ye, friends? Any thoughts? And if it’s just me missing something obvious, have no mercy.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS – How could anyone in their right mind think daylight saving time is a good idea? Rhetorical question…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A mystery to me anyway but then maybe I’m missing something obvious.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,365,395],"tags":[510,62,5997,5998,255,311],"class_list":["post-103819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-miscellaneous","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-can-owls-move-their-eyes-in-their-heads","tag-ocular","tag-preening","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/burrowing-owl-7460-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-r0v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103819"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103855,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103819\/revisions\/103855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}