{"id":21052,"date":"2013-12-31T07:03:55","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T14:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=21052"},"modified":"2013-12-31T08:18:18","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T15:18:18","slug":"barn-owl-facial-disc-manipulation-and-the-colors-beneath-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/31\/barn-owl-facial-disc-manipulation-and-the-colors-beneath-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Barn Owl Facial Disc Manipulation And The Colors Beneath It"},"content":{"rendered":"

During my recent encounter with this male Barn Owl at Farmington Bay\u00a0I noticed something I’d never seen or even thought of before – manipulation of the facial disc that changes its shape and alters\u00a0what we can see on the face of the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This is the shape and configuration I’m used to seeing – the classic “heart shape” of the facial disc (ruff)\u00a0of the Barn Owl.\u00a0 Notice that there’s an indistinct but noticeable dark line running down the midline from the forehead to the base of the bill.\u00a0 I\u00a0guess I’ve\u00a0always assumed that this was simply the color of the surface feathers there, matching the darker color of the surface feathers that outline the perimeter of the “heart”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But that’s not the case.\u00a0 While this owl was resting and grooming (rousing in this shot) it spent much of the time with the feathers along the midline of its facial disc pulled apart, revealing “something” dark underneath.\u00a0 I’ve spent a fair amount of time watching and photographing Barn Owls and this was something new to me that I was quite curious about.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As the owl opened and closed the gap along the midline I began to realize that the dark vertical line that I’d never paid much attention to was actually not the color of the surface feathers but instead was the color from beneath showing through.\u00a0 But in my ignorance I still wasn’t sure what I was seeing under there – was it simply another layer of darker feathers?\u00a0 Perhaps at least the lower part of the dark color was the upper part of the bill that we normally don’t see?\u00a0 Or was it something else?\u00a0 Through my viewfinder I couldn’t see enough detail to figure it out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0But when I got home and blew the photos up on my screen it became apparent that what I was seeing under there was another layer of dark, rusty-red feathers that I didn’t even know existed (in that color).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/7.1, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was quite close to this owl so for most of the shots I wasn’t using my teleconverter (tc) but I took a few with the tc attached to try to get as much detail of the facial disc as possible.\u00a0 This extreme crop shows the best detail I could get of the rusty-red plumage beneath the surface whites of the disc.<\/p>\n

I’ve read that owls can manipulate the shape of their facial discs to better direct sounds to their ears under varying conditions.\u00a0\u00a0I find that fascinating and have attempted to research more information about it but have mostly come up empty.<\/p>\n

I suspect that\u00a0I’ve been pretty na\u00efve about the sub-surface colors of the disc and that these\u00a0owls may be capable of even more dramatic changes in disc shape than I’ve presented here.\u00a0 Rehabbers in particular may see these kinds of things regularly.\u00a0 If so, I’d be interested in any information or experiences you’d care to share about disc colors, function\u00a0or shape changes.<\/p>\n

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

During my recent encounter with this male Barn Owl I noticed something I’d never seen or even thought of before – manipulation of the facial disc that changes its shape and alters what we can see on the face of the bird.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21059,"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":[344,5,334,395],"tags":[45,68,607,211,608,453,309],"class_list":["post-21052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","tag-barn-owl","tag-canon-7d","tag-facial-disc","tag-male","tag-ruff","tag-teleconverter","tag-tyto-alba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/barn-owl-9086-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5ty","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21052","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=21052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}